


Like O, Like H

by luninosity



Series: Like Sugar (Spell It Out) [1]
Category: Actor RPF, Captain America (Movies) RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe - BDSM, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Arranged Marriage, BDSM, Consensual Kink, Dom/sub, Explicit Sexual Content, Falling In Love, First Kiss, First Time, Kink Negotiation, M/M, Relationship Negotiation, True Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-21
Updated: 2014-07-16
Packaged: 2018-02-05 13:53:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 30,556
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1820722
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/luninosity/pseuds/luninosity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Chris made an offer. Sebastian said yes. And today’s the day they sign the contract.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [straddling_the_atmosphere](https://archiveofourown.org/users/straddling_the_atmosphere/gifts), [checkthemargins](https://archiveofourown.org/users/checkthemargins/gifts).
  * Translation into 中文 available: [Like O, Like H](https://archiveofourown.org/works/2024727) by [ogawaryoko](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ogawaryoko/pseuds/ogawaryoko)
  * Translation into Русский available: [Like O, Like H](https://archiveofourown.org/works/7478784) by [black_sun](https://archiveofourown.org/users/black_sun/pseuds/black_sun)



> The first part of the first story. There will be more. Oh yes, there will be more.
> 
> The story lurking behind the inspiration is of course tahariel's [Backseat Verse,](http://archiveofourown.org/series/17766) over in XMFC fandom, which has never left my brain.
> 
> The title for this story and for the series comes from Tegan & Sara's "Like O, Like H".
> 
> Thanks, enablers. <3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Chris and Sebastian get ready.

_Sebastian_  
  
It’s a wedding day. It’s his wedding day. It’s their wedding day.  
  
Sebastian bites his lower lip so hard he tastes blood. No one’s around to see. He’s glad, even though he shouldn’t be. He shouldn’t have those opinions.  
  
The water’s hot and soothing as it falls through his hair. The shower’s not large, but neither is he, so they’re comfortable together. Home. His apartment. The place he’d chosen for himself, three years ago. Wide windows and pale walls and space, the luxury of _space_ , room unshared and not meted out by a suspicious government with secret-police eyes. His piano and the garish joyful splash of nineteen-fifties science-fiction paperbacks on the shelves. Music and sentences like optimistic song.  
  
This is his place, and he’s going to lose it.  
  
He bites his lip again. It hurts. He probably should stop that. His Dominant won’t approve of him showing up injured. At least, not injured through his own doing.  
  
His Dominant…  
  
That thought hurts as well. The water splashes onto his shoulder in sympathy. It can’t do a thing about the situation, but it’s trying.  
  
He doesn’t have any reason to think that Christopher Robert Evans will be cruel or careless with him. The opposite, in fact; everything he knows about the man suggests that Christopher will be kind. Sebastian’s seen the YouTube videos, the interviews. Christopher (“call me Chris!”) is thoughtful and genuine and occasionally goofy, an artist with expressive hands and complicated eyes, blue and green and brown, the ocean tugged by tides over sand. Chris Evans has not let the fact that one of his rough sketches recently sold for nearly five hundred thousand dollars at auction go to his head. Chris Evans laughs like sunrise and touches people constantly, unthinking assertion of physical presence and power.  
  
Chris Evans will, after today, legally own him.  
  
He’s aware that that’s hardly politically correct phrasing these days. The Dominant/submissive contract is a mutual one, equally entered into. Both parties say yes. There’s a ceremony. A priest. He does have recourse if Christopher is abusive or vicious. Submissives can file for divorce, though that’s controversial, and only ruled legal a handful of years ago. He’d have to provide undeniable evidence of the abuse. He’d have to find someone willing to listen to a submissive without laughing at the idea that his Dominant could do anything he didn’t secretly want.  
  
His stomach ties itself into knots. _More_ knots. Joining the ones already present.  
  
He could say no. He could walk away.   
  
But it’s too late for that.   
  
He touches his throat with a fingertip. Wonders how it’ll feel under a collar.  
  
He’d been happy. He’d known it couldn’t last, and he’d been happy.  
  
Not all the world’s population identifies as Dominant or submissive, of course. More than half, but not all. His mother and stepfather don’t. They’re happy, too. They’d agreed to let him go on pretending, if that was what he wanted. And he had, he had, he’d built a life and a career out of the black and ivory of piano keys and the exhilarating joy of concerts, the moment when the audience fell away and left him alone in eternity with his music—  
  
He’d made one mistake. Perhaps two. Getting caught visiting a certain club. Satisfying specific needs.   
  
He brushes fingers across his throat again. Maybe he can stay here in his shower forever. Never leave. His shower won’t mind.  
  
An unclaimed submissive is considered available. Open for the taking. Legally he has the right to say no; legally he also has no recourse when men and women come up to him after performances and suggest, grinning, that he kneel.   
  
Submissives are in general more rare than Dominants. Sebastian, a sub who’s gone years without being claimed, who’s got a career and a certain modest amount of fame—more so in the wake of the Academy Award nod for his film score for _America’s Captain,_ the previous year—and who can on good days admit that he’s not unattractive, long legs and faded exotic accent and a mouth he’s been told too many times is made for sucking cock…  
  
Sebastian’s unusual. Practically unique. He’s had suitors falling over themselves to request his contract. Some of them even tactfully.  
  
Chris Evans hadn’t been the first. Not even in the first wave. But had sent a letter, painfully polite, to his mother, inquiring very properly about terms and compensation. Sebastian’d only been surprised because he’d known the name; he’s seen that art in galleries, in special exhibits, at museums. He’d always thought, gazing at the sweep of ink on paper, that Chris knew about loneliness. That someone who could create such art had to be a man who understood anxiety and apprehension and the terrifying courage needed sometimes to wake up and walk into the day.  
  
He knows why Chris asked. The public also regards uncontracted Dominants with some suspicion, as if they might pounce on the nearest warm body and demand surrender. And Chris’s career will benefit from the appearance of stability in his life. What he doesn’t know is why Chris asked for him.  
  
What he doesn’t know is what Chris expects of him.   
  
Chris had, in defiance of accepted practice, written to him as well. It’d been an awkward note, clumsily and hurriedly phrased. Containing mostly apologies for the awkwardness, and a small miniature sketch, more or less abstract: music notes curling upward and turning into stars and spirals and dancing swirls, in hues of blue and silver and gold. Colored pencil on paper, with torn edges.  
  
Sebastian’d run a finger over the sketch, feeling pencil-dust along his skin, standing alone beside his kitchen table in his sun-bathed apartment, the rest of the mail tossed heedlessly aside.  
  
He’d written back a single word: yes.  
  
And now they’re here. With Chris’s generous compensation already paid to his parents—and that’s another reason for the yes, a reason he’s not prepared to talk about, not when he can barely think of it in the privacy of his own head. With their wedding looming ahead. With himself standing in his shower, shaking abruptly everywhere, shaking head to toe, taking a step back and colliding with the wall and sliding to the ground—  
  
He buries his face in his hands. He’s not crying. He’s only breathing. It’s hard to remember how.  
  
He said yes and he’s getting married and he’s going to belong to Chris Evans. He’s going to kneel and bend his head and vow to surrender, to obey his Dominant’s commands, to accept punishment when meted out. To, in a word, submit.  
  
He’s always known, about himself. He’s known what he needs. He’s been discreetly to those clubs. Has held out arms for handcuffs, and moaned out loud when shoved to the floor and fucked hard and _used_.   
  
Chris will use him. Tonight. Consummation. And he’s not certain whether the airlessness, on the floor of his shower under the burning spray, is fear or desire or some tangled knot of both. Artist’s hands, his own contracted Dominant’s hands, on him.  
  
If Chris wants to touch him. If Chris is happy with him. If not…  
  
He can’t think about the if not. He’ll never get up.  
  
And he has to get married.  
  
So he does get up. And he scrubs shampoo through his hair and makes himself whistle fragments of Tchaikovsky, Sinatra, Four Seasons tunes. Who loves you, pretty baby. Who’s gonna help you through the night.  
  
He even laughs.   
  
When he gets out of the shower, his skin’s pink from the heat and from scrubbing. It won’t matter, not especially. He’ll end up getting the ritual cleansing at the temple in any case, and won’t that be marvelous. He sighs. Eyes his suit. At least Chris isn’t a terribly hidebound traditionalist; he could be wearing transparent linen robes and veils, or nothing at all.   
  
He has to laugh again. Chris might take one look at him and run, in that case. He’s not the chubby twelve-year-old he’d once been, discovering the delights of American fast food and the novel abundance of supermarkets; but he’s hardly the sort of person who turns heads across a crowded room. Legs too long, smile too wide, eyes too big, hair too fluffy unless he flattens it into good behavior. He’s just too…everything. Chris Evans no doubt expects a shy demure submissive, not a gawky science-fiction enthusiast who has lingering nightmares about dead-eyed men in government uniforms and who occasionally forgets the correct English words for what he wants to order in restaurants.  
  
He sighs again. Pauses, towel around his waist, to scribble a line or two of notation on the notepad that lives near his sink for those brilliant shower-ideas. It’s a forlorn wry little melody, tattered and laughing about it.   
  
His hair drips on the paper. He considers this for a second, then works the spot in as a quarter note. Maybe it’ll be a score for some romantic comedy, someday. Something with a happy ending. He does like that idea. Maybe there’s a counterpoint, an equally longing self-sufficient song, and they’ll fill in each other’s gaps…  
  
Half an hour later, his hair’s standing up in multiple directions and the towel’s entirely dry and he puts the pen down, stretches, catches a glimpse of the wall clock, and swears.  
  
In three different languages. Loudly.  
  
And then he throws on jeans and the first t-shirt that comes to hand, grabs his suit for changing into after ritual cleansing, forgets to grab any kind of food at all, and runs.  
  
  
 _Chris_  
  
“What if,” Chris says, as his mother brushes imaginary lint from his shoulder, “he doesn’t like me?”  
  
“Don’t be ridiculous,” she says, and pats his bicep. This, while nice, does not offer any sort of factual reassurance.  
  
“Everyone likes you,” Scott observes, straightening his own tie. He’s somehow managing to look more stylish than Chris at Chris’s own wedding. There ought to be some sort of law about younger brothers and attractiveness, Chris decides. “Babies like you. Little old ladies like you. Everyone’s _mothers_ like you.”  
  
“But what if he doesn’t?”  
  
His mother stops dismissing the imaginary lint and takes his chin in hand the way she used to when he’d been five years old. He instantly feels that way again. “He said yes to you, Chris. He must’ve had his reasons.”  
  
This brings up a whole new set of worries. “What if I’m not a good Dom for him? What if he—what if I’m _too_ likeable?”  
  
Scott starts laughing. Chris kicks him in the shin. Ineffectively so.  
  
He’s serious about asking. He looks around the temple’s waiting room desperately. Quiet wood, smooth and golden as honey; simple and plain and designed for calming nervous fidgeters. He wants to pace. It’s inconveniently not large enough.  
  
He’s not allowed to see Sebastian before the ceremony. His submissive will be getting the customary ritual bath and inspection by temple acolytes, pronounced clean and worthy of him, and then brought to him before the priest. He’s trying not to think about Sebastian Stan naked and wet and anointed with oil. This is an impossible task. Sebastian Stan is beautiful, all endless legs and enormous eyes and that slow curling kitten-smile at the corners of a breathtakingly wide mouth.   
  
Chris hadn’t known who he was, not really, before the Academy Awards the previous year; Sebastian hadn’t won, but had been nominated as the composer of the _America’s Captain_ soundtrack. Chris, idly watching the awards circus with his siblings, throwing popcorn into his mouth and at them, had stopped chewing mid-bite and sat up, staring at the fantastically gorgeous person on his television screen.  
  
Fantastically gorgeous, wonderfully gifted, and shyly sweet. Chris had unabashedly bought all the classical-music records, hung on every word of interviews, of behind-the-scenes footage and movie extras. Sebastian blushes and then gets amazingly excited whenever anyone asks him questions; those aquamarine eyes light up—the _oh you want to talk to ME?_ practically neon signs in all that blue—and then dive into discussions of mood and tone and the collaboration of composing. Sebastian always gives everyone else the credit. His orchestra, the actors, the director. All sincere, delivered in that New-York-cityscape-via-wild-green-Romanian-forests lilt, faded accent caressing vowels and consonants like lovers.  
  
Chris hadn’t been able to believe the news when it’d first broken. Sebastian Stan, pianist and composer and, apparently, well-concealed submissive. Uncontracted. _Available_.  
  
He’d known the offers must’ve been pouring in. Had sat at his desk on repeated nights thumping his head against agreeably thick wood. How could he offer, what did he have to offer, just a kid from Boston with no college degree, pizza and beer and prank wars with his siblings and pick-up basketball on weekends; what could he bring to lay at the feet of all that exotic skittish elegance?  
  
He does have art. And people seem to like his art. He’d not known what Sebastian might like, but he’d thought about his favorite songs, the simple ones from Sebastian’s live concert recordings, the bright pensive spill of piano-language into the air.   
  
He’d sent the formal offer, as proper as he could make it, to Sebastian’s mother; she’d be accepting suitors on her son’s behalf, as the only blood relative. Sebastian’d mentioned a stepfather, casually, in interviews; maybe it’d mean something that Chris knew that, had done research, was taking care to follow customary forms. Not that other Dominants wouldn’t do the same. He was sure they had.  
  
He shouldn’t’ve written to Sebastian himself. He couldn’t not.  
  
And he’d gotten the single-word note back, delivered by courier. Yes.   
  
And now he’s here. Getting married.  
  
He’d taken the heavy creamy sheet of notepaper with that single word and put it very carefully into one of his sketchbooks, slid between pages. Safe.   
  
He wishes he knew why the yes. He wishes he knew what had made those huge turquoise eyes pick him. If he could know, he could try to do it again.  
  
He’d snuck into one of Sebastian’s concerts, two weeks previously, three days before the yes. He’d paid, of course, having bought a ticket; but that’s a drastic violation of all the rules and customs. No influencing the submissive’s choice while options remained on the table. No contact.   
  
He thought maybe Sebastian’d seen him. Those winter-river eyes had flicked his direction, scanning the crowd, then returned. But that might just be imagination. He’s not certain Sebastian would know his face. No reason to.  
  
His mother pats him on the arm again. “He’ll adore you.”  
  
“That’s not helping, Mom.”  
  
“If you’re worried you’re not strict enough, just be stricter,” Scott offers, as if it’s that easy. Scott is currently entertaining offers from at last count six interested Dominants, and happily refusing to make a choice. Chris sighs. Aims. Kicks.  
  
“Ow!”  
  
“Don’t kick your brother,” his mother says mildly, “on your wedding day.”  
  
Both of his sisters seem interested at this. Carly inquires, “Is it just today, then? Can we kick him tomorrow?”  
  
“I’ve raised feral children,” his mother mourns. “I tried. God knows I tried. I’ve given up. Chris, listen, all right?”  
  
“Um. Okay?”  
  
Her gaze is steady and proud and sure. Chris remembers open doors and welcoming ears, spare bedrooms where any friend or acquaintance in need could turn up for a night or a week, no questions asked. “Listen to him, when he talks to you. He’s never been contracted to anyone. He’s been keeping this a secret—and wouldn’t you, if you knew you’d have to give up your own independence, if you had his career—and he’s probably just as nervous as you are, so just…remember to listen to him, okay?”  
  
Chris nods. Breathes out.   
  
Scott comes over and fixes his tie, too. “And, hey, remember, he can leave you, these days. If he gets a look at your ugly face up close and decides, hell no, he’s out of here.”  
  
“Thank you,” Chris says, “so much.”  
  
“You’re welcome.”  
  
“I’m gonna call the most annoying one of your prospects, the one who keeps leaving bad love poetry and red roses on your car, and tell him I’m accepting on your behalf.”  
  
“You’re not allowed. Mom’s still our Family Head.” But Scott actually hugs him and adds, “You’ll be fine, you’ve had a crush on the guy for ages, just be yourself, ’cause that’s weirdly endearing, it’s like this bizarre magical thing you’ve got going on. Despite your face.”  
  
“Thanks.” But it does help, as much as anything can. He’s here and he’s got his family and they think he’s not going to screw this up too badly. The quiet walls of the waiting room seem to think so, too, or at least they’re withholding judgment.  
  
And Sebastian Stan said yes. Sebastian looked at his gift, accepted his offer, and said yes.   
  
And they’re getting married. And Sebastian will be his. Kneeling at his feet. Vowing to obey him. Wearing his collar. Belonging to _him_.  
  
That thought, despite all the nerves, sends a shiver of crackling anticipation down his spine.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which there is a ceremony.

_Sebastian_  
  
Sebastian feels somewhat ridiculous.  
  
He’s being bathed, honestly put into a tub and washed, by nonspeaking acolytes. His suit’s eyeing him meaningfully from across the room. It knows he’s late.  
  
This particular room, the room of preparation, is hot. Smoke from incense and steam from the bath drift up and blur the air. When he breathes, he can taste spice and sandalwood and something sharper, unidentifiable. The scent stirs a not-quite-present tingle under his skin, as if his body’s reacting out of instinct. The tub’s copper and time-hallowed, and he tips his head back against it. The hands’re gentle on his body.  
  
He’d not have wanted the ritual, content with a quick painless contract-signing at any civil court location, if it’d been up to him, if anyone’d asked. But no one had.  
  
He wonders whether Chris had stipulated the ceremony, or whether his mother’d wanted it, or both. His mother had made an impressive fuss over the occasion of her only child’s wedding; this might just be her doing. His stepfather…  
  
Well. His stepfather will be here as well. Possibly not remembering Sebastian’s name or why he’s there, but smiling and nodding, trusting his wife that this is important.  
  
His fingers curl in on themselves, under the surface of the water. Nails biting into skin.  
  
Alzheimer’s. So cruel. Too cruel, to a man who’d always loved books, learning, teaching; to the man who’d been so kind to a scared Romanian-speaking twelve-year-old brand-new stepson…  
  
The closest acolyte makes a small distressed sound. Touches his hand.  
  
He breathes out. Uncurls fingers. Lets her rub at the marks he’s left on his palm. He is sorry; not their fault, and he’s causing more work.  
  
The temple’s glad he’s here. The pale simple walls and vibrant treasurewood carvings capture the light of lamps, the drift of the incense, the purpose of the moment. He breathes more deeply. Maybe it’ll calm skittering nerves. Maybe, maybe.  
  
Maybe he should’ve eaten some sort of food. The heat and the heavy drowsy scents are pooling into haziness in his head. He’s afraid to stand up. Might fall over.  
  
Chris Evans. Tall and powerfully-muscled; possessing thoughtful eyes and artist’s hands. Unconventional enough to send him a gift directly, to attend one of his performances, dark beard grown out and making him look far more mature than Sebastian’d expected. Chris’s official website and Chris’s artist’s bio both show him without the beard and with blond hair, smiling like a poster boy for wholesome goodness and apple pie. Sebastian rather likes the beard. Can imagine the scrape of it along his skin, across his collarbone, making him shiver. Between, perhaps, his thighs.  
  
The room’s even warmer now. His skin’s warm too, flushed and over-stimulated; even the soft lap of the bath’s abruptly unbearable. He sits up, accidentally splashing the girl next to him with scented water.  
  
“ _Rahat_ —sorry, sorry—” English, English, though he’s not going to curse out loud again, not in the fucking temple. “Can we just—stop? _Vă rog._ Please.”  
  
She gives him a somewhat affronted look. Sebastian sighs, but only inwardly.  
  
It’s too much, he wants to say. It’s too much outside and in, I’m scared and I’m about to lose the life I’ve built for myself and I don’t even know him, this person who’s about to claim me. I don’t know how to be a good submissive, and I have to be, I have to please him, I have to make him want me. I think we’re being entirely traditional and there must be aphrodisiacs in the incense or the bath oil because I can’t think straight and I’m also fucking _starving_ …  
  
No wonder the consensus opinion remains that submissives are incapable of making firm and healthy decisions. He’s not exactly a sterling counterexample, even if that is just his own personal idiocy and nothing at all to do with biological hormonal imperatives.  
  
The girl pats him tentatively on the shoulder. Offers a towel. Compassion in her eyes. He gets the feeling they’re not technically done, but they’re humoring him.  
  
The temple _does_ want him here. It’s been quite a while since they’ve hosted a ceremony with this kind of notoriety. And this is what these walls’re made for, to celebrate two separate halves becoming one joyous whole.  
  
He resolutely does not make the pun about holes when it springs to mind. He’s going to have to learn to be docile and respectful; may as well start practicing now.  
  
If he loses Chris, if he loses this…  
  
Chris might be unconventional enough to permit him control of his own income. Likely not his own property; that’d be a step too far. Questions about Chris’s control. Criticism.  
  
But Chris is an artist. Chris must know that searing cometary imperative: to dive headlong into incandescent beauty, to throw oneself into the dark and come up with stars, to _create_.  
  
If he loses this he’ll have to find someone else. He has to be there for his mother and stepfather and those medical bills and sleepless nights. He has to have a career, not just ornamental piano-playing for his Dominant’s guests at parties. He can only have a career if he’s officially contracted and—in the eyes of society—safely guarded.  
  
He skims fingers over his throat again, while three pairs of hands briskly towel him dry.  
  
The worst bits, the deeper too-intimate bits of the process, are long over, and he’s far past any physical humiliation regarding the nakedness. His body still aches slightly from that particular treatment. They’d been gentle, but in some ways that’d made it worse. They’d needed him clean, though, from the inside out. Purified.  
  
The hands dab oil over his skin. Arms, stomach, the small of his back, the hollow at the base of his throat. Cinnamon, he thinks, and vanilla, and that other mysterious spice. Chris might simply decide he smells like a pastry. Perhaps that’s the idea. Encouraging nibbles. Bite-marks.  
  
He doesn’t laugh. Not precisely the definition of funny.  
  
Fingers slip along his thighs and up to his cock. He jumps. And then apologizes. And the boy looks a bit startled, and then grins. “I surprised you. Don’t apologize.”  
  
“Oh, you are allowed to talk, I should’ve said hello…” He hesitates. No idea about the etiquette of introductions and questions when the other person’s got a disinterested hand around Sebastian’s unfortunately very interested anatomy. Every slick touch feels amplified a thousandfold. Aphrodisiacs. Hell. “Ah…are you…can I ask questions?”  
  
“We aren’t really supposed to talk,” the boy says, sitting back, looking up, grinning through dark hair, “but you’re nice. Also I own the soundtrack to _The Pact_. Totally eerie. I loved it.”  
  
Sebastian actually winces. He’d been well paid. And at least the reviews had been kind to the film score, some calling his work the only worthwhile attribute of the picture. “I can send you a copy of one of the pieces we didn’t use, if you’d like…if you enjoy eerie…too dark, that one was. We couldn’t fit it in. But I liked it. I— _pula mea_ —!”  
  
This time inquisitive fingers are slipping down the crease between buttocks. Stroking oil tenderly over that muscle as well, around the rim of his hole, still stretched from the cleansing and relaxed from hot water and opiates in each inhale.  
  
He forces himself to breathe. Preparations. For Chris. For Chris to fuck him. Consummation.  
  
He thinks of Shakespeare—a consummation devoutly to be wished, indeed—and does laugh this time, because it’s that or cry.  
  
“Sorry!” says whichever acolyte’s behind him, hastily. “You’re kind of tense.”  
  
Sebastian closes his mouth on the _yes and why do you think that might be, considering where your fingers currently are_ and instead says, “ _Îme pare rău_. I’m very sorry.” Passive. Meek. Submissive. Right.  
  
“How many languages do you speak?” asks the wide-eyed boy who likes his music, now plopped happily on the floor in front of him. One of the others nudges him with a toe. Sebastian interjects hurriedly, “Five,” before this scuffle can escalate. “Romanian, English, German, French…I can get by in Russian. Though I’ve been told my pronunciation’s not the best. Is there someplace I should send it? The song copy?”  
  
“Oh, wow,” says the boy, looking reverent, and the taller boy kicks him again and hisses, “James! Not talking! Not getting attached! Also _time!”_  
  
Time. Indeed. Slipping away.  
  
They throw him into his suit—no underwear, and Sebastian almost asks but decides he can guess the reason, and swallows hard—and button his waistcoat and jacket and play with his hair. Sebastian wonders whether he ought to apologize for that too. It’s being its mischievous self.  
  
The girl puts her head on one side. Fluffs the front up more with her fingers. Then smiles. Sebastian tries not to be skeptical of this smile. He knows his hair.  
  
The boys wave eyeliner at him; he gives in gracefully. That’s traditional too, making the submissive look his or her absolute best, decorated and ornamented as a gilded gift. He’s not sure his eyes need to be any bigger, but the acolytes have the experience he doesn’t, so he mentally shrugs. Maybe Chris likes adornments. Accentuations. He can try to learn.  
  
He’s lightheaded now, and his entire body’s shivering, confused prickles of desire and need and vertigo and oversensitive nerve-endings. The fine wool glide of his suit over bare skin makes him want to scream. No one touches him with hands any longer, only eyeliner pencil and straightening of his tie.  
  
It’s maddening, and terrifying. He’s craving a touch, a caress, a brush of skin to skin; he knows rationally why they can’t, knows he’s being saved and made willing for his Dominant, and he knows he’ll end up begging Chris to hold him down and take him and let him feel it.  
  
He’ll beg because he won’t be able to help himself. And he’s more afraid than he can ever recall being in his life, at that last comprehension.  
  
He’s not hungry anymore—too dizzy, too twisted up in other needs—but he should’ve eaten. Something to counteract the drugs. Some sort of grounding. He wobbles on his feet; the boy who likes his music catches his arm, eyes concerned. “Nervous?”  
  
“ _Da_ …yes…thank you, I’m…” Fine? All right? Okay? None of those is a word for what he is. “…getting married.”  
  
“You know,” the boy—James?—says, hand too warm on his arm even through layers of suit fabric, “he’s nice. Your Dominant. We didn’t talk to him, but I saw him when he got here. Laughing. With his family, I think. He looks happy. Like a happy person. And you’re so nice, and you two should be happy together.”  
  
The boy’s beaming at him. Sebastian can’t find the words to shatter this fairy-tale dream. In any case, who knows. Might even be true.  
  
“Thank you,” he settles on, because it’ll let the boy think he’s helped, which is to be fair somewhat true. Chris Evans seems to be a happy person; well, that’s more than he’d known before. Of course Chris might only be happy about getting a submissive of his own to play with, under his command.  
  
Sebastian just wishes he could think. Wishes he could breathe. Wishes his body felt like his, not this intoxicated tingling ocean of need.  
  
“Lip gloss?” the girl says. They confer. Opt for something clear and guileless, no color at all but extra shine. His lips don’t need any help, they announce.  
  
Sebastian doesn’t say anything. Can’t. Not because of the lip gloss presently being applied to his mouth.  
  
They grab his hands and pull him out the door and down a nondescript hallway and up to gilded double doors. The air’s cooler and only faintly scented here, light woodsy incense. He gulps it in. One inhale. Two. Holding chilly reality in his lungs.  
  
The acolytes grin at him and fling open the doors. Everyone in the temple turns his way.  
  
Sebastian, for a fleeting second, the weight of all those eyes like a physical impact in his gut, imagines himself turning to run.  
  
But he can’t. He’s going through with this. He has to.  
  
He can’t run, in any case. He can barely walk.  
  
So he does. He looks straight ahead at Chris Evans and his destination, and he walks.  
  
Chris Evans is a tall broad-shouldered flare of grey and dark and stillness at first, a vision that resolves itself into component parts as Sebastian gets closer. The suit’s grey, matching his own. The hair’s dark and neatly combed, as is that beard; Sebastian’s cock stirs unbidden, remembering daydreams. Chris’s expression’s serious, as befits a man at his wedding. Chris’s eyes…  
  
They’re blue as seas and tidepools and sunlight over sand. Sebastian, distracted by the shifting emotions, thinks of a melody, a deep rippling tune like merry oceans. Waves dancing over the surface; hidden pensive pools beneath. He could write for those eyes.  
  
They change, watching him. Concern coming in on the tide. Sebastian shakes himself, hopefully not visibly. Focus. Stay upright. Sign the damned contract. Get married.  
  
His mother and stepfather are in the front row on the left, across from Chris’s family. He finds a smile for them as he passes; his mother is valiantly pretending she’s not crying, and doing a decent job of it. His stepfather’s got an arm around her, and this must be a good day because he’s smiling as well, and it’s a smile born of comprehension, not puzzlement.  
  
Sebastian resolutely does not start to cry himself. Only walks up to Chris’s side, takes a very deep breath, and drops flawlessly to his knees on the provided cushion.  
  
He hopes it’s flawless. He did practice the public gesture in private. For all he knows, given the drugs and the dizziness, he could be on the verge of falling off the feathery pillow.  
  
He keeps his eyes down, because that’s what a good sub ought to do and because he’s afraid to look at Chris. From this angle, he can see the lines of Chris’s calves, straight and elegant in grey. The shine of polished shoes. The simple wood-grain of the temple floor. He follows a knot with his gaze. That’s real, that snarl of wood and time. This is real.  
  
A hand lands on his head. Large and warm, heavy but not demanding. The weight’s also real, and supportive; and he looks up involuntarily.  
  
Chris. Chris touching him. Chris gazing down at him, a single furrow between apprehensive eyebrows. Chris sliding his hand to the back of Sebastian’s head, thumb brushing his ear, no doubt ruining all the careful prep work involving his hair. Sebastian doesn’t care, because Chris doesn’t seem to.  
  
The priest’s saying words. Eternal bond, complementary souls, other halves discovered. Chris raises eyebrows at him, just a fraction: are you okay?  
  
Sebastian nods, equally imperceptible. Then tips his head further into the touch. It’s pathetic and pleading and thoroughly submissive and probably exactly what everyone wants from him, and he doesn’t give a damn, because Chris touching him feels like strength.  
  
The priest’s asking a question. Chris is answering. Voice profound and fervent, shaping the vows. As if he means them all. Every word: I will protect him and support him and love him as my other half.  
  
Sebastian, on his knees, wants to laugh or cry or possibly pass out. Love. It’s not about love.  
  
Another tiny piece of his scattered wits pops up to note: Chris snuck into one of your concerts, just to hear you play.  
  
His head aches. Aphrodisiacs, the ceaseless scent of incense, the unending drone of the words and the weight. He should’ve eaten, he thinks again. He’s still not hungry. But the back of his brain’s aware that energy would’ve been an excellent idea.  
  
Of course, then he might’ve vomited on his Dominant’s shoes. He spares a morbid thought to wonder how that would’ve played out. Rejection, no doubt. Chris gazing at him with disgust. Walking away.  
  
Chris finishes making vows. His other hand’s inches away, and the first one’s not left its place; Sebastian can’t help looking and feeling. Chris has big hands, broad and strong.  
  
He imagines them on his skin. They will be on his skin, soon. Chris will have the right to—to do anything, to him. Kindness or cruelty, with those broad hands.  
  
He’s staring too intently at the knot of a knuckle, the tanned stretch of the back of that hand. Details. World narrowing. He can’t breathe.  
  
The priest says something to him, and Sebastian needs to answer, it’s important, the vows’re important, but he can’t think, not in any language—  
  
Chris is looking down at him. Those eyebrows tug together. Worried. His Dominant is worried. And that’s not right, he’s already been a disappointment and they’re not even married, how has he fucked this up so badly so soon, and Chris _will_ leave, now—  
  
Chris leans down. Puts arms around him. Pulls him up from the floor. The assembled witnesses murmur. Breaches of protocol. Dismay.  
  
Sebastian wants to protest—this isn’t _right,_ being held up by the person he’s about to vow to submit to forever—but the support’s awfully nice. Determined arms. Solidity in a frustratingly blurry world.  
  
“Hey.” Chris’s voice is warm. Like concerned sunbeams, like the mellow rich chords of a summer song. “Look at me. We can get through this, okay?—you just have to say yes. If you can. If you want to.”  
  
Sebastian blinks. Chris’s eyes swim in kaleidoscopic enticing shades of blue.  
  
Chris sighs. Mutters something uncomplimentary under his breath. Sebastian flinches, but Chris keeps talking, soft and certain over the priest’s disapproving looks. “They gave you drugs, didn’t they. Fuckin’ traditional—you _can_ say yes, right? Or no. If you don’t want me. I would like it if you said yes, but don’t say it if you don’t know what you’re saying. We’ll call it off right here if you say so.”  
  
“I’m saying yes,” Sebastian whispers. His mother, his stepfather, his life, their family. Yes.  
  
And maybe, maybe, he’s saying yes for himself. Because his Dominant’s the sort of person who will ask.  
  
Chris studies his eyes for a minute more. They’re nearly the same height; nearly, but not quite. Chris is an inch or so taller; that’s the way it should be, that’s right, himself having to look up at his Dominant, and where the fuck’s _that_ thought coming from?  
  
“Okay.” Chris keeps one arm around him. Sebastian wants to protest, but also doesn’t want to protest, and this is complicated enough that he gives up and accepts the assistance. Chris looks back at their priest, who now appears huffily annoyed. “Honestly, young man, if you can’t behave appropriately—”  
  
“I asked you not to give him drugs.” Chris’s voice is low but angry. Blue-hued steel. “I told you I didn’t want—”  
  
“The traditional ritual includes—”  
  
Sebastian, very carefully, licks his lips and whispers, “Sir.”  
  
Both irate gazes snap to him. Chris opens his mouth; before his Dominant can get any angrier, Sebastian picks out more words, one by one. “I know what I’m saying. I’m saying yes. Please.”  
  
There’s tension around the line of Chris’s mouth, in the set of his jaw; but he nods. “All right.”  
  
“Here.” The priest presents them with the contract, flowing lines of script on paper; it’s a standard one, not whatever private rules they’ll work out among themselves, but it does include the basic provisions for acceptable care for a submissive, and the right Sebastian has to report any mistreatment and request separation if necessary. Chris glances at him, leaves the arm around his waist, accepts the pen, signs. Decisively.  
  
When Chris holds out the pen to him, their fingers brush. Sebastian’s entire body lights up. He can’t hold back the gasp. Chris holds his gaze and folds the pen firmly into his fingers; Sebastian trembles. That hand, that command. The world spins, when he blinks.  
  
He pulls himself together. Puts pen to paper. Signs.  
  
  
 _Chris_  
  
Chris, watching Sebastian sign his name beneath Chris’s own, feels his heart flip around inside his chest like it’s been hit by a tidal wave. Too many emotions. Colossal.  
  
Sebastian signs in tall messily attractive loops and lines. Complicated. Interesting. Swift. Chris tries to remember how to breathe.  
  
When the doors’d opened and Sebastian’d walked in, he’d been momentarily dazzled. A back-lit silhouette. Lean muscle. Quivering poise, a greyhound constantly on the cusp of flight. No detail.  
  
Sebastian’d come a few steps closer, and Chris had been in awe. Eyes like shyly enthusiastic rivers, impossibly huger than he remembered from any photographs. Endless legs. Slim waist. And that wide beckoning mouth—had they done something, some sort of lipstick, lip balm, they must’ve, that hint of shine caught every last drop of light and left him breathless and instantly hard under his suit—which was so lovely and expressive and—  
  
—wasn’t exactly smiling. Well, fair enough, he’d thought at first. Serious occasion. And Sebastian had never wanted to be contracted to anyone. Had hidden himself for so long. Chris could understand.  
  
Closer. And then he’d seen the fuzziness in those eyes. The way Sebastian hesitated a fraction too long over each step, as if testing the ground beneath. The whiteness of all that skin under golden tan.  
  
Chris can’t recall being angrier in his life. Not on his own behalf—though he had asked and evidently been ignored; he doesn’t want Sebastian Stan saying yes when stoned out of his head on opiates and aphrodisiacs, he wants Sebastian to fucking _want_ him—but because they’d done it _to_ Sebastian. He’d almost stopped the whole excuse for a ceremony on the spot.  
  
But Sebastian had looked at him, and had known him. Had been able to focus on him, and give the yes.  
  
Chris, holding him in the circle of one arm, is back to being in awe. Still furious—not at Sebastian, not at all, never for something not his fault—but also amazed. Sebastian walked in here and is holding himself together through everything that’s been thrown at him and said yes.  
  
Sebastian looked up at him with heat in that gaze, after Chris touched him. Chris has to believe that’s not merely a product of drugs. Sebastian could’ve said no. Sebastian, instead, seems to like his hands. That’s something, at least.  
  
Sebastian finishes signing. Looks up at him again, eyes enormous, face pale. Chris slips the hand to the back of his neck, mostly support and a hint of direction: I’m here, you’re mine, it’s okay, I’ll tell you what to do next if you need that. Sebastian’s lips part, soundless.  
  
The priest loudly proclaims them to be formally married. This isn’t the final requirement, of course—they have a consummation to get to, upstairs in one of the rooms appointed for that purpose—but on paper, they’ve both signed, and they’ve said yes before witnesses.  
  
Said witnesses cheer. Chris’s brother wolf-whistles. Chris would kick him a third time, but Scott’s out of reach, so a decent kick would require moving, and there is no chance in hell that he’s going to stop supporting Sebastian.  
  
He’s married to Sebastian. To Sebastian Stan, genius composer and musician, beautiful and exotic, possessing the shyest sweetest slow-curving smile that Chris has ever seen. And, based on today, braver than he’d ever known.  
  
Sebastian _had_ stepped in to say the yes. Had defused the situation when Chris had been about to argue, and had made this marriage happen.  
  
Had glanced at him through long dark eyelashes and called him sir. That _sir_ ’s doing funny things to Chris’s heart and stomach. Nervousness, elation, jubilation. Not to mention the desire. His cock’s been aching since that first glimpse.  
  
Sebastian’s hair or skin or clothing is scented like dessert, vanilla and spice. It’s almost innocent but not quite, powdered sugar spiked with secret ginger. Chris breathes him in, hopefully not too obviously, and wants to devour all that deceptive deliciousness.  
  
Sebastian’s leaning on him even more, now. Waving—Chris belatedly waves too, while camera-bulbs snap—and smiling with the aid of countless past film-industry interviews at his back.  
  
They could kiss, and probably ought to. That feels wrong somehow, too presumptuous, too intimate. Sebastian might let him—would have to let him, would have to accept Chris’s hands cupping his face and lifting his chin and pulling him in to be claimed—but he can’t. Not now, not like this.  
  
He does touch the closest pale cheek with one finger. Sebastian focuses on him, reassuringly prompt. Chris lifts eyebrows, tilts his head, tries to ask without words. He can’t say it aloud; that’d come across as weakness. But he needs the consent.  
  
Sebastian looks momentarily confused, but then nods. His expression suggests that he doesn’t quite understand why Chris is waiting, but he’s willing to indulge his Dominant’s whims; that’s as good as they’re going to get without a private conversation, so Chris leans in slowly, giving him every chance to pull away, and brings their lips together.  
  
It’s a simple kiss. Almost chaste. Lips meeting for the first time.  
  
It sends sparkles all the way to his bones. More so when Sebastian leans forward marginally and parts those lips as if inviting more, as if enjoying himself.  
  
Sebastian tastes like lip gloss and soft skin and nervousness and the scent of vanilla. Chris can’t help licking at the curve of that lower lip. Sebastian gasps, but it’s not a bad response, not drawing back in any way. Chris chases the sound. Discovers the heat of his mouth, explores the flavor of him. Learns the enchanting little moan and arch of hips when Chris’s teeth nip gently at plush lips. Sebastian wants him, he can feel it, and the sensation’s reckless and exhilarating.  
  
It’s also sobering. Sebastian wants him because Sebastian’s been given drugs, and because Sebastian is a submissive, with those attendant instinctive reactions to command.  
  
Chris isn’t one of the special brand of morons who believe that every submissive wants to blindly accept every order from every thug with an aggressive attitude—that’s idiotic—but there is a kernel of truth in that argument, buried under all the ridiculousness. Sebastian must know too. Sebastian almost certainly does know, given that the whole scandal of his identity had broken after he’d been caught leaving an extremely specific sort of club. He must’ve needed release so very badly, to risk that; Chris’s hand tightens, fingers inadvertently biting down over the line of Sebastian’s jaw.  
  
Sebastian’d needed someone. Some desperate night-shrouded outlet. And Chris hadn’t been there.  
  
But he’s here now. And he can take care of those needs. From the little whimper at the newfound roughness, they seem to be starting off well.  
  
That _is_ a whimper, though, and those spectacular eyes’re half closed, uncomprehending as Chris pulls away. Their audience is applauding; Chris mentally swears in English and French. “Sebastian? Look at me.”  
  
It’s an order. His submissive— _his_ submissive—listens. Astonishing. And astonished: those eyes are huge. “ _Da_ …I mean, yes. Sir.”  
  
“Still with me?” He smoothes his thumb over the fading pink marks. His fingers, on Sebastian’s skin. “Also, I can get yes or no in Romanian, but anything much more complicated, you’re gonna have to say it in English or French, all right?”  
  
Sebastian opens his mouth, eyes regaining some clarity, even dancing a bit. Chris would give the world to know what he’s about to say, but will never know, because the playfulness shuts off as if Sebastian’s flipped a switch. “Yes, sir.”  
  
This time Chris is the one who opens his mouth, but finally shakes his head. They need to talk. Not here, not now. “Upstairs? Get away from the circus?”  
  
“Circus…”  
  
“Yeah, you know, clowns and elephants and—oh, wait, maybe you don’t, um—”  
  
“I know what a circus is, sir,” Sebastian says, and then, after what appears to be several seconds of internal debate, “I was wondering whether your mother or mine might be considered the ringmaster.”  
  
Chris, startled, laughs out loud. Every pair of eyes in the temple is riveted to them. The priest’s scowling. Levity no doubt frowned upon. Ceremonies are weighty business. No laughter allowed.  
  
Sebastian’s smile’s tentative but sincere. And—apologetic? “Sorry, sir. I thought you’d want to know that I was here. With you.”  
  
“Of course I—what? Wait, don’t—you’re not trying to fuckin’ apologize for making me laugh, are you?” He knows that Sebastian’s doing exactly that. His heart twists inside its cage of bone. It hurts. “Don’t. Just—” They still can’t do this here. He grabs Sebastian’s wrist. “Come on.”  
  
They run through the temple’s back door to the echo of applause and Scott shouting, “Have fun!”  The straight slim wooden staircase to the first-night bedrooms stretches upward, simple and unoccupied but for them; floating dust specks glint ruby and gold in sunset light.  
  
Chris’s hand stays wrapped around Sebastian’s wrist. He sees Sebastian glance at the grip and choose to leave it there.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which they consummate their marriage.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Er...yep, that says four chapters now not three. Because the morning after is part of this story, too.

_Sebastian_  
  
Chris pulls him up the narrow stray-sunbeam stairs and down the hallway and into the only open door, third on the left. Sebastian, failing to regain equilibrium from the escape and the drugs and the headspinning presence of his Dominant’s hand around his wrist, trips over nothing tangible. Chris catches him instantly—that hand again, tightening, and the other on his waist—and holds him upright, blue eyes looking intently into his.  
  
Sebastian’s knees, of their own volition, threaten to buckle. Traitorous knees. Surrendering without notice.  
  
“Fuck,” Chris mutters, and walks him two steps to the low table on the left, and puts Sebastian’s hands firmly on the wood. And then lets go. Takes steps away. Scrubs both hands over his face. “You—fuck.”  
  
Sebastian leaves his hands flat on the table as instructed. It’s a friendly table. Supportive. Taking his weight.   
  
It’s being used at the moment to display a tray of fruit: oranges, grapes, strawberries, pineapple, with a few pieces of the latter two having been chocolate-dipped. The sort of fruit one might nibble in bed during a rest, energy and sugar and sweetness. Teeth biting into the red flesh of a strawberry, while juice drips over skin. Lips closing around the firm shape of a grape nipped from lazy fingers.  
  
He swallows. It’s difficult, with so many emotions in his throat.   
  
The rest of the room’s friendly also, or doing its best to be. Not large, but tasteful and encouraging: the wide window’s welcoming the sunset to the west, and the floor’s splashed with thick cream-colored rugs over honeyed floorboards. There’s a door on the far wall; from this angle, he can see far enough to guess that it leads to a bathroom. Good for washing up, after. After.  
  
There’s a bed. It’s busily soundlessly taking up most of the space. Tall and four-postered and crisply sheeted in plain cool white silk. It’ll show everything. Every stain, every mark. Whatever Chris does to him.  
  
His next breath dies in his lungs. _Whatever_ Chris does to him. And this night more than any other is about claiming, about establishing ownership. There are white silk cords tied to the bedposts, hanging innocuously down. And a chest, closed but not locked, on the only other table in the room.  
  
His gaze lands on his wrists. He can feel the weight of Chris’s hands there even now. Huge and heavy and assertive, holding him up, holding on. Pinning him down.   
  
His entire body shivers, lighting up with desire and terror. He wants that. He _wants_ that, to be put on his knees at Chris’s feet—at his Dominant’s feet—and to find there someplace he might belong, where he can stop thinking and carrying the weight of his secret and his family’s needs and the fearsome splendid demands of his piano. He wants to be made to purely _feel_.  
  
Chris might make him feel.  
  
Chris might make him feel safe.  
  
Chris might make him scream.  
  
Chris has wandered over to the window, hands on the sill, head bent, breathing deeply. Sebastian hesitates. Chris put him here, but hasn’t given him any verbal orders, and surely his Dominant knows that they need to consummate the marriage. That’s why these rooms exist, in this airy space above the consecrated temple below.  
  
He lifts a hand, tentatively. Chris doesn’t turn.   
  
Okay. He can do this. He can make Chris want him. He can be the submissive he’s never learned to be, and maybe then Chris will look at him with desire instead of anger and pity and whatever else had lain behind that offered arm during the ceremony. Sebastian’s fairly certain some of the anger’s directed at the priest who’d ignored requests, but some of it must be aimed his way as well: he could’ve objected to being given drugs, he should’ve noticed sooner, Chris must be wondering why he let this happen. Must be disgusted with him, a submissive who couldn’t make it through their ceremony without needing assistance.   
  
Chris continues not turning around.  
  
Sebastian moves the other hand. Fumbles with suit-buttons. Complicated, when his fingers feel like clumsy icicles, and icicles that don’t belong to him at that.  
  
He loses jacket and waistcoat and shirt, and flinches at the caress of twilight air over heated flesh. His skin’s too tight and cold and hot. His cock’s aching; his body’s restless, unsettled, craving. He needs his Dominant; he needs to be touched; he needs to be granted release. The urge pools in the pit of his stomach, in drawn-up balls, in the slickness of oil between the curves of his backside when he moves. Too much. Not enough.  
  
The scent of the fruit beside him drifts up, sweet and ripe. He’s lightheaded, breathing it in. Chris hasn’t said he can eat.  
  
He opens his belt, slowly because icicles aren’t good at opening belts, and drops his pants to the floor, and walks over to taut shoulders where Chris has hands braced on the windowsill. Says, “Sir,” and drops to his knees, naked.  
  
Chris spins around. Nearly falls over his own feet. One hand flails for the windowsill. “You—you—oh, fuck—what’re you doing?”  
  
Sebastian blinks. Twice. “Consummating…our…marriage? Sir?”  
  
“Oh God.” Chris drops his face into his hands. Through fingers, pleads, “Stop. Saying that. Please.”  
  
“Ah…would you prefer something else?” He’s never considered that possibility, but he has been to a few clubs, and he’s heard other terms. “Master? Daddy?”  
  
“Holy fuck,” Chris says, eyes wide. “No. Stop. _God_.”  
  
Sebastian opens his mouth— _you want me to call you God?_ —and then frantically bites back the sarcastic reply before it can leap out. Modest. Obedient. Biddable. Submissive. Fuck.  
  
Chris is now looking at him oddly. “Were you about to say something?”  
  
“…no. Sir. I mean—what would you like? For me to call you?”  
  
“In public…I know you have to…you can say sir…but call me Chris. At home. Just—use my name.” Chris has carried on regarding him with curiosity. “Are you sure you weren’t about to say something? You looked—you know you can say what you’re thinking, right? I’m not gonna be angry with you.”  
  
You already are, Sebastian thinks. And it wasn’t my fault, I didn’t know, I didn’t realize, and when I did I thought you’d asked for the traditional wedding night, if I’d known I’d’ve said something before the bath…  
  
He says, “Yes, Chris.”  
  
Chris’s eyes narrow. “Did they tell you to agree with whatever I say?”  
  
Sebastian honestly can’t hold back the surprise on his face. He doesn’t even get an answer out; Chris rumbles, “Fuck,” once more, and stalks over to the bathroom and yanks one of the cloud-like white robes from its hook. “Here.”  
  
Off guard, Sebastian barely catches fabric as it’s flung at his face. Stares at the closest sleeve helplessly.  
  
Chris lets out an exasperated string of blasphemies, pulls him to his feet, and bundles him into clothing. Sebastian’s too lost to protest, even though this appears to be the opposite of wedding-night consummation; Chris scoops him up into strong arms and plops him into the bed among a mountain of pillows, which instantly try to smother him in excitement. Chris knocks half of them onto the floor with a sweep of one irritated arm. Sebastian feels a bit bad for them. They’d been attempting to help.  
  
“Focus.” Chris snaps fingers in front of his face. “Can you look at me? Fuck—I know whatever they give you’s supposed to make you compliant, but this—did something else happen? Something I need to know? Tell me.”  
  
“I…no, nothing…I didn’t eat, but…”  
  
“When was the last time you ate?”  
  
He doesn’t remember—he might’ve skipped breakfast as well, mostly out of nerves—and this must show in his expression. Chris makes a kind of impatient noise and runs over to the tray of fruit and comes back with grapes. “Here.”  
  
Sebastian’s confused enough to just stare at him from the middle of the bed. Chris sighs. “Will you please eat something? I’m not going to ravish you on the spot.”  
  
“You’re…not?”  
  
“What the fuck do they teach you about Dominants?” Chris absentmindedly tosses a grape into his own mouth. Sebastian watches him swallow, entranced by the motion of that throat, the bob of his Adam’s apple, masculine and casually powerful. “I don’t sleep with people who might pass out in the middle of sex. Not exactly, y’know, a good time for either of us. Eat the grapes. Unless you want something else. I’ll call, I don’t know, some sort of room service, they must have other food around, if—”  
  
“No!” Too quick; but he’s baffled and out of his depth. This…isn’t anything he’s ever been prepared for. His Dominant’s supposed to claim him, to assert marital rights, to—  
  
Well. _Not_ to ask him about dining preferences. “I’m all right. _Promit_ —I promise.” He sits up, hugging too-long legs to his chest beneath the robe. “If you want—they’ll be checking—whether we—”  
  
“They won’t be checking until morning. Do you have something against grapes?”  
  
“What…no…I like grapes…” He likes blueberries better, but he’s not sure whether Chris—his new husband, his Dominant, oh God—wants to know that. Rather feebly, he catches the one Chris throws his direction. And mutters, under his breath, “ _Tu mă_ _confunzi._ ”  
  
“What was that?”  
  
“Oh…I said…” Giving up: “I’m confused. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to—I don’t know how to—what do you _want_ from me?”  
  
Chris actually grins. “Okay, thank God, that sounded real. You with me?”  
  
“You…asked that before.” He eats another grape. The flavor bursts like summer over his tongue. “I don’t know what you mean.”  
  
“Language question, or content?” Chris brings over the whole tray of fruit this time. “Eat more. I’ll make it an order, if you want. And answer the question.”  
  
Sebastian pauses, picking up a slice of chocolate-draped pineapple. “Content. I do speak English. Since I was twelve. Be clearer, sir.”  
  
And then he drops the pineapple back onto the tray, because he’s just said that out loud. Guard down. Not keeping up the façade.   
  
Chris picks up the fruit and hands it back to him. Sebastian accepts it, because he’s too mystified to refuse. The pineapple’s mystified too, and hence provides no help at all when he looks at it.  
  
“You like pineapple?” Chris puts an entire strawberry in his mouth, minus the leafy bit. Sebastian watches, fascinated. “You can have it all.”  
  
“I like chocolate. You aren’t…you’re _not_ angry. With me.”  
  
“For telling me I’m not being clear? Nope.” Chris pushes a chocolate-coated berry his direction. “Maybe for not eating. Do we have to make that one of our rules? Standing order, something you do every day?”  
  
Sebastian considers this proposal. The strawberry, when he nibbles at it, approves. “…perhaps. I’m not used to that. Daily rules. But…that one might be a good idea. What did you mean, then? If I can ask?”  
  
“You can always ask.” Chris stretches, pulls off his own suit jacket, throws it someplace behind the bed. He looks completely comfortable that way: slightly rumpled, lingeringly concerned but utterly in control, sitting on the foot of the bed while his submissive’s curled in the middle picking at provided fruit. Sebastian considers him silently for a few seconds.   
  
Chris visibly blushes, a hint of pink creeping across fair skin. “Okay, what?”  
  
He can’t in fact say the precise thoughts that’ve been running through his brain. He’s very aware of his nudity, under the robe, and the contrast between himself and Chris’s clothed muscles. “You look…good. Like this.”  
  
Chris’s eyebrows fly up. “Really? I—you don’t have to say it. If you don’t mean it.”  
  
Sebastian raises a single eyebrow right back. And then no doubt spoils the effect by licking chocolate from his thumb. “I mean it. And you didn’t answer my question, sir. Chris.”   
  
Chris is staring at his just-licked thumb. Sebastian takes this as a promising sign. Perhaps the other chocolate-covered pineapple, then. More to clean up. With his tongue.  
  
“You’re so fuckin’ beautiful…” Chris sounds distracted, sentence trailing off. Sebastian can’t contain the spurt of absurd laughter, because that’s the exact opposite of true.   
  
And then he claps a hand over his mouth, because oh God he’s just laughed at his Dominant, and no matter how unconventional Chris Evans is proving to be, there has to be a line _somewhere_.  
  
Chris frowns at him. Of course. “That was funny?”  
  
“No,” Sebastian whispers through horrified fingers. “Sir.”  
  
“Wait.” Chris reaches out and takes his hand, tugging it away from vain attempts to smother reckless words. “You seriously don’t get how gorgeous you are? I mean, I pretty much fell in love with you—oh, hell, this’s gonna make me sound like the shallowest guy on the planet, but—I saw you on tv, you know? The Oscars? And you were smiling, and—I couldn’t not look at you. Smiling. You’re hearing me, right? Is any of this making sense?”  
  
Those are two different questions. They have different answers. Sebastian tries to think. Chris likes the way he looks, for whatever reason; there’s sincerity behind the Boston skyline of that voice. And that’s a partial answer, then, to the question of why Chris would want him.   
  
All right. He can live with being considered pretty. There’re worse reasons Chris could’ve bought him.   
  
“You like the way I look,” he ventures, a confirmation that he has, yes, heard the words.   
  
“Yeah, I do…” Chris sighs. Toys with Sebastian’s fingers in his: coiling them up, unfolding them, playing with flexible joints. “I’m getting the feeling we’re gonna have to talk about this more. But not right now. More important, you asked me to clarify, and I need to do that. I asked you if you were with me, right?”  
  
“Yes?”  
  
“I meant, not physically. Or, sort of physically, ’cause that’s part of it, whether you can literally focus on me. If you know what you’re doing. But kind of emotionally, too, y’know? I don’t want you to say what you think I want to hear. I don’t want you to not say something if you’re upset or uncomfortable. I want you to be honest. With me.”  
  
Sebastian studies his fingers and Chris’s, laced together. His are longer, but Chris’s are heavier, callused from pen and pencil, more assertive.   
  
Honest.   
  
“…I understand. I may still be confused as to why, you are aware. And beginning to suspect I’m married to a closet political reformer.”  
  
Chris glances at him sharply, after a second recognizes that Sebastian’s cautiously teasing him, and then grins. “Would you mind? Also, how’re you feeling?”  
  
“Better, I think.” Accurate phrasing; the vertigo’s faded somewhat, though the unmoored yearning sensation remains. Food can’t take the place of authoritative hands on his body, masculine weight atop him, an incontrovertible length filling the space where he’s so empty and slick…   
  
He picks up another grape with his free hand, hoping that’ll conceal the shakiness. “And…if you are, that’s your right, but…I don’t know how I’d feel. I’m only barely getting used to this. I’m sorry, Chris.”  
  
This is honest but skirting around the edges of not, by omission. He _doesn’t_ know how he’d feel if his Dominant turned out to be a sign-waving submissives’ rights protester. Relieved, to some extent—it’d mean Chris would treat him with respect—but he’s unconventional enough on his own, a sub who’s spent his life pretending otherwise, and he’s never had the desire to revolutionize the world.   
  
He’s seen the aftermath of one glorious revolution; even as a child, he’d known the meanings of certain words. Rationing. Secret police. State security. Fear.  
  
Here in America he’s been free. Has thrown himself joyously into his work. The song of the piano, the crystalline instant when notes take flight across a page.  
  
And he needs this marriage to work. For him to remain free. For his family.  
  
And, shamefully, he wants Chris. Wants to know how it’ll feel, this role he’s never fully played, this thorough all-encompassing surrender to strength.  
  
“Hey.” Chris squeezes his hand. “Thanks for that.”  
  
“For…what, precisely?”  
  
“For telling me what you think. Even if you don’t know. That was good, okay, I’m, um, pleased with you. I—”   
  
Sebastian loses the next few words. Flushed all over. Anticipatory. Electric. Comets down his spine.  
  
“—so you don’t have to seriously cope with that, I mean, I do care, Scott for one needs someone watching out for him, but I don’t have to be on the front lines, y’know?” Chris taps fingers over the back of his hand, unconscious emphasis underscored on Sebastian’s skin. “I’m on record supporting the cause, but I’m not sort of good at publicity, I get nervous doing interviews, and my uncle’s a congressman, he handles the political fighting, I just make art. Sebastian? Still here? Feeling worse?”  
  
“I’m…fine…what you said, to me…sorry, sir, I’m all right. And that makes sense.”   
  
“What I said…” Chris looks him up and down. “About you being good for me? You want to…be good for me?”  
  
He inhales at that, involuntarily. The sound echoes in his ears. Across the listening room. The robe’s too warm and he needs it off and he needs more—  
  
“Okay,” Chris murmurs, voice reassuring as a forest, deep roots and bedrock. One hand slides up to cup his face; Sebastian nuzzles into the touch, aware that he should be embarrassed but unable to be. Chris says, “Okay,” again, and gets up—Sebastian whimpers—and moves the tray of fruit and comes back, hands steady and tangible on his shoulders. “You were handling it all right until I said that? Too much?”  
  
“I don’t know,” Sebastian whispers, and wants to cry with frustration, with unmet desire, with the demands of his body and the nearness of his Dominant and the unlooked-for kindness in blue eyes. “Please…”  
  
“Shh.” Chris pulls him closer, settles Sebastian’s head on his shoulder, strokes Sebastian’s hair. “I want you, I do, and I’m gonna help, I’m gonna take care of you, that’s my job, all right? You said yes to me, to us, and you’re mine, and that means I get to give you what you need, clear?”  
  
Sebastian whispers back “Yes, sir,” and feels his cock jump, his body clench, at the words. His own. Chris’s. He belongs to Chris and he’s going to be good for Chris and Chris will give him what he needs. Yes.  
  
“Yes,” Chris agrees, and rubs his back through fuzzy robe-layers. Sebastian turns his face into Chris’s chest. Breathes. Chris smells like warmth and expensive shirt-linen and something dark and green and safe, shadowy secure forest paths toward sunlight.  
  
Chris holds him for an indeterminate amount of time, and that feels good in a way he’s never known he could feel, drifting and anchored in unison. He never wants to move; but eventually the gentle caresses aren’t enough, as his body takes each touch and becomes more languid and euphoric and demanding. Fire-pinpricks under his skin. Painful pleasure each time his cock stirs and rubs along his stomach. The ache’s omnipresent and delicious; and he squirms against Chris just to feel it.  
  
Chris lifts his chin. Gazes at his eyes. “…oh. God. You—you look. Well. If you could see yourself, so perfect, like this, wanting me, all mine…”  
  
He whimpers. Wriggles again. Chris’s cock’s stiffening as well; he can feel the line of it, hot and excited, against his hip.  
  
“Hey, okay, slow down, I’ve got you. Really quick, though, I have to—I have to make sure, before we do this.” Chris props him up, hands easing the robe down but eyes meeting his. “Rules. We’ll go over this in the morning when you’re not—when we can talk about it. For now, three basic ones, and you’re going to remember, that’s an order, got it?”  
  
Sebastian nods. Processing’s not easy, but he’s aware that this is important. He manages to keep his eyes trained on those serious ones, as Chris goes on.  
  
“Okay. First, I said be honest, and that means here too. If you don’t like anything I do, if you’re even not sure and you want to wait or you need something explained, you speak up. I’ll never be upset with you for asking. Agreed?”  
  
“Yes, sir.” That answer’s more difficult than it should be. Chris’s hands are tugging the robe inexorably off his arms. Leaving him naked and aroused and exposed, shivering in the crackling night air.  
  
“Second, you _are_ here. With me. I need you to be able to say yes or no. Aware of what I’m doing to you. If you think you can’t, if you don’t feel capable of making decisions—what?”  
  
He has to consciously recall why he’d shaken his head. But Chris’s tone isn’t angry, only concerned, and those large hands are cradling his face with exquisite tenderness. “I…about decisions, sir, I can’t…”  
  
Chris swears under his breath. “Are you saying you don’t know what we’re doing? Right now?”  
  
“No! I mean…I meant…I want you to make decisions. I can’t—I’m yours. You said. Please.” Incoherent, inarticulate, but maybe Chris will impossibly understand, here in this enchanted bubble of raw truth.  
  
And Chris seems to, from the nod, from the way one hand slips down, tracing a line of radiance along Sebastian’s neck, to the hollow at the base of his throat where his pulse flutters, down over his chest. “Okay. I get that. I get to decide what you deserve. But you have to know enough to say yes or no when I ask. If I think you’re incapacitated, if I think it’s too much, if you can’t answer when I ask, we’ll stop. Fair?”  
  
“Yes…” That hand’s resting over his hip, proprietary and not quite cruel enough to leave bruises but close. Sebastian’s cock twitches, smearing wetness across his stomach; and Chris is still dressed, and how is _that_ fair? He wants to beg for more, and he doesn’t want to beg for more, because this is Chris’s decision, about what he’s allowed to have.  
  
Chris flicks the fingertips of the other hand against his cheek. Not hard enough to be a slap; more than a caress. “Yes what?”  
  
“Oh…yes, sir.” When he opens his eyes, he can feel the yes dissolving throughout his bones, leaving him liquid as molten sugar. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“Better.” Chris leans in out of nowhere and kisses him squarely on the lips. It’s a proclamation of possession; Sebastian revels in it. “Last one. You did sign the contract. You belong to me, now. And I expect you to obey me. When I give you orders, if I want you kneeling at my feet or wearing my clothing in public or listening without question if I say it’s important…we’ll work out safewords later, if there’s something you can’t do, and I swear I’ll listen, but for now, I want you to know this. You’re my submissive, and I will do whatever I want to you. _With_ you.”  
  
Sebastian trembles, under the caress of his Dominant’s exploring hand.  
  
“You like that,” Chris muses, smile deep and present and wondering, in that voice. “Me telling you you belong to me. Me telling you what I want to do with you…if I want you on your knees with that mouth around my cock, or if I want to tie you to this bed and make you come over and over, until you’re screaming my name…or if I decide you haven’t earned it yet, because you don’t come until I say so….”  
  
He hears himself make a sound. It’s a broken blissful sort of sound. No words. Only the ceaseless glorious torment of Chris’s hand teasing the sensitive skin of his inner thigh, stroking the crease of his hip, but going nowhere near the places that ache for it most.  
  
Outside, the sun’s gone down. The stars are out, glinting with secret silver delight across blue velvet damask. The universe holds its breath, here in this quiet wood-beam room. Himself, and his Dominant, and the silent happiness of the sky.  
  
“Say yes or no,” Chris demands, very softly, fingers resting over his hip, on the spot that hadn’t bruised before but might this second time.  
  
And Sebastian, with everything he is, whispers, “Yes, sir.”  
  
  
 _Chris_  
  
Sebastian whispers the yes into the night. And for a second Chris can’t believe it, just sitting there lost in wonder on the bed, his hand lying forgotten over the flushed line of that lovely left hip.  
  
He’s aware he might be smiling loopily. But. Sebastian said yes. Sebastian heard his rules—the basic ones, as simple as he could make them for distracted aquamarine eyes to follow—and said yes. To him.  
  
Incredible. Astounding. Like shooting stars and the birth of a brand-new universe, unfolding into possibilities.  
  
Sebastian’s naked and lovely and obviously aroused, cock standing straight up and dark and dripping; Chris wants nothing more than to dive in and lick him all over, discovering the taste of him, the noises he makes at each lick of tongue, the expression in those eyes when the peak hits. But he holds back. Control. Dominance. Establishing the dynamic. Right.  
  
Sebastian’s breathing fast, chest rising and falling, eyes huge and a touch dreamy. Chris thinks of how sweetly he’d curled into being held, how those long limbs had calmed and gone pliant under the petting. Sebastian likes being touched, being talked to; Chris’s never been the most vocal in bed, always slightly awkward when asked for dirty talk, but he’s thinking he can handle this. After all, those words—you’re mine, you come when I say, if I want you on your knees or tied to the bed—had felt easy. As if they’d always been waiting at the tip of his tongue, waiting for Sebastian Stan in his bed.  
  
Testing, he skims a thumb over Sebastian’s nipple, taut and flat; this earns a gasp and a sway closer to him. “ _Vă rog_ —please—Chris—”  
  
“More?” He pinches the bud between fingers, rolling, teasing; Sebastian whimpers. “Harder?” The answer to this proves very satisfyingly to be yes. Chris files this away to be explored further later; Sebastian responds beautifully to just a hint of roughness, lips parting, eyes huge, cock jumping between those lean thighs. Chris lifts the other hand, sets it at the side of his neck, fingers curled loosely around the graceful column of his throat.  
  
There’s no pressure in the grip, but Sebastian shivers regardless, muscles relaxing into perfect welcoming submission, content with the weight. In those eyes, black’s nearly drowned the pale blue topaz. But the blue’s still aware, and trusting. Not saying no.  
  
“Amazing,” Chris tells him, “incredible, so good, you’re so fuckin’ good, for me,” and Sebastian’s eyes slide shut for a moment, then open, wordless as joyful blossoms at dusk.  
  
“Lie down.”  
  
And his submissive does, docilely flowing down onto the bed in a single balletic movement, endless legs and enormous eyes and arousal. Then looks up at him, tongue sweeping out to moisten parted lips.  
  
Chris reminds himself to breathe. Lurches off the bed, yanks off the remains of his suit—he needs to feel Sebastian everywhere, all that golden skin under him, against his own—and dives back to kiss that faint curving smile. His. Unbelievable. Except it’s real. Somehow, astoundingly, it’s real.  
  
There are cords and ties attached to the bedposts. There are toys and cuffs and gags and canes in the chest off to the side. He’s been told. Looking down at Sebastian, spread out like a treasure-trove across white-sand sheets, he can’t imagine using any of them.  
  
Later. Definitely later. He wants to see what Sebastian can take, if the simple pinch of a nipple and the bite of fingernails into flesh can elicit such delectable cries. He wants to see his handprints reddening that well-muscled ass; wants to learn how Sebastian looks bound in blue silk and black leather, cock ring denying him release, while Chris fucks that fabulous mouth.  
  
Not tonight. Tonight is about hushed breaths and newly-mapped territories and beginnings. About his hands and his mouth drawing surrender from his submissive.  
  
He scratches fingernails along one inner thigh, where long legs’ve obediently fallen open for him. Pinkness follows, filling in the lines; Sebastian moans. Chris leans down and kisses the marks, tongue easing new hurt; Sebastian sobs. Chris breathes, “Mine,” hot and close over that tender spot. Sebastian quivers, but stills as Chris strokes his hip. “Shh. I did say I’d take care of you. I’m gonna give you what you need. What you know you need.”  
  
Hazy turquoise eyes attempt to focus on his face. Chris kisses his stomach. “You want me in you, don’t you? You want me to fuck you. To make you feel me everywhere, inside you, filling you up with me. Making you know it. _My_ submissive.”  
  
This earns a whimper, a word that might be Chris’s name or yes or not English at all but is decidedly not stop. Chris ducks his head to hide the smile. Puts steel into his voice. “Hands above your head. On the pillow.”  
  
Sebastian stares at him for a heartbeat or two, then seems to figure out that he can move, and obeys.   
  
“Good,” Chris praises, and observes the slow welling-up of drops from his eager cock, need pooling over taut muscle. “You want to be good for me, don’t you? My good boy.”  
  
Sebastian’s hips snap up from the bed, entire body on the brink of ecstasy. Chris grabs him—and that _will_ bruise, he knows, his marks on that flawless exotic skin—and shoves him back down. “Did I ask you to move? You don’t move, you don’t come, until I say. Clear?”  
  
He’s desperately hoping Sebastian’s lucid enough to comprehend and answer—if not, they’ll have to pause, and he’s not sure he can; his cock’s so hard he’s afraid he might explode, and his chest aches, airless—but he hears the faint, “yes, sir,” carried on a shaky exhale. And his submissive stops trying to push back against restraining hands, falling quiescent into the bed.   
  
Chris’s heart performs a small giddy somersault. He’s so amazed, and so proud, and so damn excited to be here.  
  
“So good,” he affirms, and trails a finger over Sebastian’s stomach. Lower. Along the inviting track of dark curling hair. Sebastian’s breathing speeds up more, but he doesn’t try to move again, and those hands stay obediently above his head, though pianist’s fingers’ve curled inward with tension.  
  
Chris smiles. Traces a circle around the base of that straining length. Sebastian has a lovely cock, no surprise given the rest of him; not excessively sized, but perfectly proportioned and nicely thick. And, currently, leaking copiously at every lightest touch.   
  
He walks the fingers further back. Over the tight-drawn twin weights of his balls, over vulnerable secret spaces behind that. To that small pink furl of muscle.  
  
Sebastian’s wet here too, some kind of oil that’s body-warm and slick over his curious fingers. Already prepared; must’ve been part of the ritual, and his erection presses upward at the thought that his submissive’s been walking around this way all afternoon, through the ceremony and after, kneeling before him on the floor and talking about consummation…  
  
It’s all he can do not to plunge forward and bury himself in that willing body on the spot. His anatomy absolutely believes that’d be the best possible plan.  
  
But Sebastian’s—not inexperienced, no. Not terribly experienced, however. Not when he’s been governing his own needs so strictly for so long. Chris doesn’t know precisely the extent of that experience, those hurried scattered nights at leather-corset clubs. They’ll need to talk about that. But Sebastian’s not indulged often. And that ring of muscle’s resistant to his exploring fingers, despite the preparation.  
  
There’s more oil over in that chest of toys, ranging from innocuous and simple to darkly ginger-spiced. The latter’d be too harsh for this first time, when Sebastian’s barely learning how to trust him; he contemplates getting up for one of the uncomplicated versions, but his sub lets out a tiny distressed cry as he starts to slip away.  
  
He stops. “I’m here. I’m right here, I’m not leaving, I just—I don’t want to hurt you.”  
  
Blurry ocean-edge eyes come back far enough to find his. “You won’t, sir.”  
  
Chris isn’t convinced, but he did ask for honesty, and Sebastian’s coherent enough to have remembered. Experimentally, he presses one finger further in, up to the first knuckle. Sebastian’s next breath catches.  
  
“Are you sure this isn’t hurting you?”  
  
“Yes… _da_ …” Sebastian blinks up at him, gaze clouded by rapture. “I like it…feeling it…feeling you, sir. Please.”  
  
“Tell me,” Chris says hoarsely, “if you need to stop,” and pushes deeper. One finger. Two. Sebastian trembles and closes those eyes; Chris employs his free hand to stroke a quivering hip, a tense leg. Soothing, gentling. It works; Sebastian’s breathing falls into a slower rhythm, and muscles stop clenching around the intrusion. Chris offers more words, talking, praising, encouraging. That works even more.  
  
He crooks fingers. Searching. Not quite; he tries again. And Sebastian’s eyes fly open, and incoherent words in multiple languages spill frantically into the night.  
  
Ah. There. He does it again, fingers rubbing over that firework spot. Does it until Sebastian’s begging and writhing and swearing and sobbing his name: sir, yes, please, Chris, more, may I—  
  
“Not yet,” Chris orders, and slides fingers out—Sebastian cries out at the emptiness, hole fluttering around nothing—and himself into position, clumsy with haste, fingers sticky with oil and tattooed indelibly with the feeling of Sebastian’s body. And then he eases forward.  
  
Sebastian lets out a broken little noise at the penetration, at Chris’s cock stretching him wide. Chris freezes in place. “Am I hurting you? Answer.”  
  
“N-no… _nu_ …I don’t know…”  
  
“Eyes open. Look at me.” He uses the nonmessy hand to brush damp strands of once-fluffy hair out of Sebastian’s eyes. “You promised to be good. Look at me. Right now.”  
  
And Sebastian’s eyelashes flicker and lift, sweeping upward. And those eyes shine like the stars: slightly damp, but brilliantly clear.   
  
Chris holds his gaze, unmoving, giving him time to adjust; gradually, he feels Sebastian’s body give way and open up for him, tension ebbing into acceptance of command. And it’s that recognizable Romanian lilt, spun by desire into pure jewel-toned need, that whispers first, “Go on. _Vă rog_ —please, sir—oh, Chris—yours—”  
  
The plea, the acknowledgement, that word— _yours_ —scorches the air. Kindles bonfires in the night.  
  
Chris loses every last semblance of measured control. Slams forward. Grabs one of those infinite legs and lifts it high, then the other, hands shoving them up and apart, yanking Sebastian hard against him as he plunges all the way home.  
  
Sebastian screams his name—and God, yes, Sebastian is a screamer in bed, uninhibited and wonderful, forgetting to be shy—and shudders around him. Pleasure. A hint of pain, maybe, at the sudden roughness. But good, he can tell it’s good, can feel it and hear it in every tiny gasp and cry and whimper; so he pulls back and thrusts again, and again, losing himself in that tight slick grip.   
  
Sebastian’s moaning, high and desperate, and his hips lift again, cock straining. Chris knows he’s getting close, close enough to forget orders and simply let go. But that’s not going to happen, not tonight. Not on this first night, when Sebastian is his.  
  
He moves a hand. Wraps fingers around the base of Sebastian’s cock. Squeezes. Hard.  
  
Sebastian doesn’t scream out loud. No sound.   
  
“Look at me,” Chris pants, buried in him, fucking him. Sebastian’s crying in earnest now, long eyelashes wet, but those eyes are oddly serene when they find his, as if that’s been the last push over a diamond edge and into flight.   
  
Chris, in the middle of sex, in the middle of the scene, wants to smile. Sebastian Stan, here in his arms. Trusting him this completely.  
  
He shoves Sebastian’s legs further back, practically bending him in half, cock sliding more easily now in and out of that acquiescent hole. Sebastian complies readily, unprotesting, moving the way Chris wants to arrange him; Chris leans over him, finds both graceful wrists, and pins them to the bed with his own hands. Sebastian sighs, artless and trusting, and blue eyes don’t leave his face but get huger, darker, adrift in surrender and ecstasy.  
  
Chris—bent over him, deep _inside_ him—growls, “Mine,” and fucks him harder, finding that spot and pounding into it, over and over, and Sebastian’s breath’s coming in small cracked whimpers and that body tightens around him, begging mutely—  
  
That feeling tips him over the edge. The cascade of sparks explodes through his bones, and the world goes white-hot and soundless as a thunderclap, and he feels himself coming, wave after wave of pent-up want spilling into Sebastian.  
  
Who’s shuddering beneath him, wrists captive, eyes lost in the inundation of sensation.  
  
Chris holds him down, thrusts into him once more, twice, hardness fading but enough to rub across that shining spot, and orders, “Now.”  
  
Sebastian gasps, tenses, and arches under him. Coming without a hand on his cock, coming on the length of Chris’s cock inside him, coming on command.  
  
Chris watches, awestruck. White splashes spurt and pool between them, on and on, spreading and sticky. So much, and so lovely, and he says so, murmuring the words even though he knows his submissive can’t hear, or at least won’t process the meaning. They’re all true, those words.  
  
Sebastian’s limp and exhausted in the aftermath, whimpering softly as Chris pulls out of him, not moving his wrists yet: no orders given about changing position. Chris bites his lip and cleans them both up, tenderly, with a damp towel from the bathroom; Sebastian wakes up enough to murmur something drowsy in Romanian, and then, “Oh— _rahat_ , sorry, sir—” followed by an attempt to sit up which ends in a gasp and a wince and a flop back into bedding.   
  
“Shh,” Chris says, and stretches out beside him, pulling him over into decisive arms. “It’s okay, you’re okay, what hurts? How bad? Can you tell me?” His heart’s skipping beats, unbidden.  
  
Sebastian stares at him with wild eyes. “You—I’m supposed to—you took care of us, after, I should—”  
  
“I like taking care of you.” Even, mild, no hint of flaring fury at whoever’d told Sebastian what submissives are supposed to do and be. “And you’re tired, and I like seeing that. You all worn out because of me…dripping with me…”  
  
Sebastian’s posture’s caught between desire and distress and profound fulfillment. “I like that, but…but I…should’ve…”  
  
“No.” Because those spectacular eyes seem perplexed, he elaborates. “I wanted to take care of you. And I’m in charge, right? Making decisions?”  
  
“Yes…”  
  
“So you’re just gonna have to put up with that one. Me taking care of you. You didn’t answer the question.”  
  
“The question…oh…no. No, you were…” Sebastian stops. Touches one wrist with the fingers of the other hand. Regards him with grave startled solemnity. “I liked it. You were…you felt good. I feel good. Tired. Possibly sore, but…”  
  
“You like it.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
“I like you,” Chris says, and one corner of that wide mouth tips up in response. “My submissive.”  
  
“I think I like you as well.” Sebastian settles his head onto Chris’s shoulder. Chris folds arms around him. “Sir.”  
  
“I like you saying that.”  
  
“I like saying it.” Sebastian turns his head, presses a kiss to Chris’s shoulder, loose and contented. “I am…glad I said yes to you.”  
  
It’s not an I love you. It’s too soon for love and they’re floating in the afterglow of a good scene and shimmering endorphins and exertion. Chris knows all that. And the glow spreads out from his heart and through his body regardless. Every limb. Head to toe.  
  
“Rest,” he says, and buries a hand in Sebastian’s hair, holding him in place. His submissive sighs and nestles against him as if Chris’s arms are the safest most comfortable place in the world. Chris kisses the top of his head, heart so full it’s close to breaking, and adds, “You were good, too, so good, the way you want to be,” because they _both_ like those words. Sebastian mumbles sleepily, “I’ll be good for you, Chris,” and then that soft breathing evens out, warm and steady over naked sweat-cooled skin.  
  
Chris holds him close in their pale wedding-night bed under the distant approving glint of the stars. Breathes in the sweet scents of pineapple and chocolate and spiced-vanilla oil and earth-shatteringly magnificent sex and completion. And thinks, very very quietly, about how lucky he is.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which it is the morning after.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Apologies for the wait! This chapter got WAY longer than I intended.
> 
> The internet is my source for all the information about Chris's tattoos and their referents; apologies for any inaccuracies.

_Sebastian_  
  
The morning’s warm. That’s the first sensation: falling sunbeams curiously tapping at bare skin. Sebastian doesn’t bother to open his eyes, only stretches one leg out and curls it up into a more comfortable position. The sunlight’s cozy and the body next to him feels like solid muscle and security, one arm flung proprietarily over his waist and heavy weight snug against his back, and he feels—good, inside, in a way he can’t recall ever having known. Tired, and possibly sore—definitely sore, he amends after another attempt at moving a foot. Legs. Thighs. Other places unused to, well, being used.   
  
But good. As if he’s been off-balance all his life, standing on one leg, and only now has found himself with both feet on the ground.  
  
He opens his eyes. Pale linen. Calm wood. The corner of a table.  
  
Not his apartment.  
  
Not his apartment because he’s gotten married and contracted and consummated the fucking marriage, because the person huffing contented breaths into his hair is his husband and his Dominant, and his heart’s slamming into his ribs and he’s naked and he’d begged Chris to fuck him, begged Chris to let him come, shameless and wanton and reveling in it—  
  
He bolts upright, back stiff against the headboard. He can’t breathe.  
  
And then he can’t help the utterly pathetic squeak of pain, because sitting on his backside is not the best idea. It’s been a long time, and Chris had begun carefully, but Chris is also strong and large and had lost that caution by the end.  
  
Because Sebastian’d begged for that as well.  
  
Chris is pushing himself up on an elbow, eyes sleepy and clumsy with alarm. “Sebastian?”  
  
“I—yes—sorry—” Inhale. Exhale. Fill up lungs. Do it again.   
  
He’s Chris’s, now. And Chris hasn’t hurt him, hasn’t wanted to hurt him. Chris is more or less a submissives’ rights reformer and _told_ Sebastian to tell him if anything didn’t feel good. Chris made that an order. Promised not to be upset.  
  
“Don’t apologize.” Chris sits up, also naked, and then bites his lip and tugs the closest sheet over his lap as if embarrassed. Sebastian can’t imagine why; Chris Evans is objectively speaking beautiful, powerful muscles and narrow waist and fascinating splashes of black ink over tanned skin, tattoos that tell stories Sebastian doesn’t know, intimate and secret and paradoxically displayed.   
  
He wants to know. Wants to explore with a fingertip the lines of art over ribs, biceps, collarbone. Meaningful, every piece, everything his Dominant’s chosen to commemorate on his own body; Chris could be music, he thinks, layered and complex.  
  
And then he stops, astonished. Somewhere in there, between the concern in blue eyes and the blushing concealment behind the sheet, the panic’s fled. Replaced by a desire to touch Chris’s shoulder and ease the worry away.  
  
He’s shocked enough that he doesn’t say anything. Chris’s eyes get even more distressed. Trouble in the oceans.  “How’re you feeling? Did I—are you sore? Were the—the drugs, do you have a headache or—oh, God, please tell me you remember last night—”  
  
“ _Da!_ I mean yes! I do! And I’m fine!”  
  
And then they stare at each other for a while. A single sunbeam plops through the window to the east. It lands on the bed and spreads out happily in the messy sheets. Good for it, Sebastian thinks.   
  
“Okay,” Chris says. “Okay, um, are you…is there anything I can do? I won’t touch you unless you want me to. But I’d like to. Hold you.”  
  
The tone’s tentative enough that Sebastian wonders what his own face looks like, what Chris had seen upon being rudely jarred awake by what now feels like somewhat foolish panic. He’s okay. They’re okay. Chris is…Chris. Confusing and kind and firm. And Sebastian, for better or worse, is himself.  
  
Chris did seem to like him being himself, the night before.  
  
He ventures, “I might have a bit of a headache,” because it’s true, and then, “You can. Touch me. I just—I woke up and…”  
  
“And it was real.”  
  
“Yes.”  
  
Chris nods. And then looks down, at his sheet-covered lap. “I’m sorry if I—I mean, I know you wanted, last night, but—and this is, um, me. This morning. I know I’m not—I don’t always think of the right thing to say. I get—nervous. I think I told you, God, I can’t even remember what I said, I do that, I just talk and words come out, and—fuck.”  
  
“You did.” Sebastian inches closer to him. Chris radiates heat. Like the sunshine, it feels friendly. He’s always associated winter with Romania, with mountains and crisp clear ice-blue skies and grey streets and grey buildings, and he could never love or hate winter because it meant home; but Chris feels like summer, like golden rays suffusing his bones.  
  
“You get nervous doing interviews, you said. Public speaking. I don’t know if I believe you, sir. You seemed ready to shout at a priest in the middle of our ceremony on my behalf.”  
  
“That was different! That was—they shouldn’t’ve fuckin’ done that to you.”  
  
Sebastian raises eyebrows, and waits. Chris breathes out, not quite a laugh, and raises eyebrows right back. “Okay, so you can get me to talk if you’re in trouble. You realize that’s not going to work all the time. For one, I’d have heart attacks on a daily basis.”  
  
“Well,” Sebastian says logically, “now you have me, and I can talk for both of us, in multiple languages, even, sir.” Chris does laugh this time, and holds out an arm, and offers, “If you want…”  
  
Sebastian curls up against him before he’s even finished speaking, incidentally tossing the interfering sheet out of the way. “You feel warm.”  
  
“You like that?” Chris puts a hand into his hair, fingers over his temple. Starts rubbing gently, unerringly finding the exact location of the lingering ache. “This okay?”  
  
“Perfect,” Sebastian concurs, as all his muscles relax at once, turning to contented water. “Thank you, sir.”  
  
“I like touching you.” The hand doesn’t stop kneading comfort into his scalp. “Do you mind? I think I’d like to be able to touch you pretty much all the time. If we’re at home, or out…tell me if that’s too much or too traditional or something, and obviously not when we’re working, but I want you within arm’s reach if it’s, y’know, possible.”  
  
As far as orders go, that’s not too bad. And in fact he rather likes the idea. Knowing he can reach out a hand and find Chris there… “Yes, sir.”  
  
“Are you smiling?”  
  
“Yes. Are you…you said when we go out…I don’t know how to say this…what should I expect?” He wants to be nervous, and academically he rather is. He’s heard the stories of those parties, of Dominants who share and swap submissives as nightly entertainment, of party favors for guests and use that goes on and on, interminable and cruel. But he has Chris’s hand in his hair and Chris’s promises—both explicit and implicit, every time Chris qualifies orders with _tell me what you think_ —hanging in the morning glow, and he can be nervous but he can’t quite be scared.  
  
“Hmm.” Chris’s fingernails scratch across his scalp lightly; Sebastian wants to melt into the touch. “I’m not gonna fucking share you, if that’s what you’re thinking. But we will have to make appearances. You…don’t take this the way it’s gonna sound, ’cause you’re amazing, but…you and I…”  
  
“You mean I successfully passed as baseline for thirty years,” Sebastian fills in for him, “and you’ve never kept a submissive for longer than a few months. I know.” They’ll need to be convincing. He needs them to be convincing. He needs to keep his future, his career, his _life_.  
  
“Well…yeah.” Chris shifts awkwardly, as if the bed’s gotten less comfortable in the last second or two. “I’m sorry.”  
  
“You told me not to apologize, sir.” He walks a hand out, along Chris’s arm. “May I ask a question? Or—more than one, I suppose?”  
  
“Always yes,” Chris grumbles, annoyance half feigned and half real, reverberations echoed through his body and through Sebastian’s where they’re aligned. “And you’re asking about the ink, right? That one’s the Taurus symbol, you know, the zodiac?”  
  
“Yes, sir, I in fact know of the zodiac.”  
  
“No one told me you were this sarcastic. No one told me submissives knew _how_ to be sarcastic.”  
  
“You like it.”  
  
“ _Yeah_ I do. My mom’s a Taurus, I’m not. The other arm, the kanji, that means loyalty. The quote…Eckhart Tolle…that’s about inner peace. Stillness. I try to remember.”  
  
“Like the piano,” Sebastian says, after an introspective moment, fingers resting exploratorily over his Dominant’s collarbone. “Like…last night. For me. When I said yes, the last time.”  
  
Silence, astonished and brilliant; into it, Chris breathes, “…like that? Seriously?” and the wonder might sound discordant but doesn’t. Like awe, instead, and the susurration of sunlight.  
  
Sebastian nods, suddenly shy; that’s too much, so he moves the hand, touches the name over Chris’s ribs.   
  
“Oh,” Chris says, and goes quiet; not in a bad way, not precisely, but without words.  
  
Sebastian takes the hand away, chest aching oddly. Chris says, “No, it’s—here,” and recaptures fingers and flattens them over calligraphy. “You can, I just—he was—he was a friend. Matt, his name was. You’d’ve liked him, maybe, I can see it. He was a submissive, like you, but not like anyone else, not really. He was fearless, just the first guy off the beach into the ocean, or parasailing, or up on a karaoke stage…he used to tell me we could do anything, because if we fell down we’d get back up, and he’d laugh like…he could kick my ass at pick-up basketball and he was friends with everybody, everyone, real genuine friends, not, like, fuckin’ acquaintances, and anything you needed, he’d be there. He’d’ve made you smile.”  
  
“You loved him,” Sebastian says, because he can hear as much in every word, every line of grief and devotion strung like bleeding rubies through the past tense. He doesn’t know what else to say.   
  
Chris isn’t looking at him. And the Boston-skyline accent cracks like gulls weeping in the distance, hoarse and terribly casual. “Yeah, maybe. I don’t know. We were kids, seventeen, eighteen. We used to joke about it, gettin’ married, if I never found someone, if he didn’t like any Doms who offered for him. He said it’d be like marrying his best friend, and who wouldn’t want that, right?”  
  
“What happened?” The next second he wants to bite his own tongue off. If Chris doesn’t want to say, if it’s private, if that’s asking too much when they’ve only known each other for a day and a night…  
  
“He died. Off-roading accident. Stupid. Rock in the wrong fuckin’ place or something, bad luck, bad weather, nobody’s fault. I wasn’t there.” Chris’s fingers fold in, massage evidently over, lifting from Sebastian’s hair. “Sorry. Not tryin’ to kill the mood, fuck, I did say I don’t know how to talk. You said—what you said, and I dumped all this on you. How’s the headache?”  
  
“Oh…better, thank you.” He sits up on his own. Space between them. Space for old wounds.  
  
His head feels better, that’s not a lie, but the ache’s escaped to his heart, spear-blow deep inside, and he doesn’t even know why. For Chris, for Chris’s loss. For his own loss, because how can he compete with a ghost, a ghost who’d made everyone smile and played pick-up basketball like a hero, who’d come from Boston like Chris and been thoroughly fearless and no doubt never had nightmares about faceless men dressed in unassuming clothes coming to take him away to interrogation rooms…  
  
He’ll never be what Chris wants. He’d thought he’d known. He’d not known at all; and only now, when the realization slides in quick and clean and fatal as a stiletto, does he understand that he’d stupidly had hope all along.  
  
“Sebastian,” Chris says, frowning a little. “Hey. Are you okay? I know that was—not exactly happy morning talk. You asked, and I just—I don’t talk about him much, but I thought maybe you—ah, fuck, never mind. I thought I said I wanted to be able to touch you.”  
  
He moves back. Closer, physically. “Sorry, sir.”  
  
“Okay…” Unconvinced; well, Sebastian doesn’t know how to fix that. He can’t fix that. He can’t be someone he’s not; and for all the times he’s wished to change parts of himself, he’s never wished to _be_ anyone else before.   
  
“Um,” Chris says, eyebrows unhappy. “You—I think you’re upset and I feel like I should apologize, but I don’t actually know why. And, um, we have to be out of here by two, so they can sort of…check the sheets for…traces…and it’s ten…so, um, I’m sorry for whatever I said and I think we should probably shower because I feel kinda sweaty now and you didn’t need to know that and I think we should talk after that, if you’re feeling up to it.”  
  
“Yes,” Sebastian says to his hands. “Sir.”  
  
“Hey.” Chris reaches over. Rests a hand on his left wrist: not holding on, but present. “First thing I asked, remember? Be honest. How’re you feeling?”  
  
“I don’t know.” He doesn’t.  
  
There’s a flicker of emotion in Chris’s eyes, a flying-fish glimpse of—what? surprise, wistfulness, longing? Surely not, they’ve barely even met, Chris can’t possibly care so much so soon or ever. The darting fin submerges itself in all the blue before he can figure it out.  
  
“Okay,” Chris says, and lifts the hand from his wrist. Sebastian instantly wants it back. A physical craving, abrupt and disorienting. “That’s…fair. Okay, go shower. Then we’re going to talk, unless you tell me otherwise.”  
  
Sebastian hesitates. He wants to say something; he wants to see Chris smile; he wants to banish that hurt, if it was hurt, if Chris is hurt because of his failure to know the correct answers. Chris has been nothing but kind, more so than he could’ve imagined. It’s not Chris’s fault that Sebastian’s a second and inadequate choice; Chris shouldn’t be unhappy because of those inadequacies.  
  
Besides, he hates failing when he could’ve done better.  
  
He gets up, because Chris has given him an order—go shower, and then talk—but stops in the doorway, hand unconsciously rising to pet the doorframe in support. It’s probably his imagination that it leans sympathetically into his hand. “…Chris?”  
  
Chris has been looking off to the left, out the window into merciless morning sun; but snaps his gaze back so fast Sebastian all but hears the crack. “Sorry—did you need something, are you okay, did I say that wrong or—”  
  
“No. You said everything right. You…” He finds a smile; it’s not as difficult as he’d thought it would be, as if he’s made a decision, and maybe he has. Chris is a good person, after all. Worth smiling at. Worth caring for.  
  
Astonished, he thinks: I almost thought, worth loving.  
  
Chris doesn’t smile back, but those ocean-bed eyes get a little more intent, wondering.   
  
“…you weren’t listening. Just now.”  
  
“I—”  
  
“Chris,” Sebastian interrupts, tasting the name on his tongue, letting it slide out in lazy honey-warm American pronunciation.   
  
“—oh,” Chris says, and then stops talking, just looking at him from the side of the bed. “You—oh.”  
  
“I like saying your name,” Sebastian says, very very quickly, and then ducks into the bathroom before he can trip over his own embarrassment any more.  
  
He showers as quickly as he can under the circumstances. A few muscles twinge meaningfully, but he ignores them and attacks his skin ruthlessly with soap until it’s pink and stinging. The last remnants of scented oil, of stickiness, of Chris, slide away down the drain. The air smells of soap, pure and clean and white as roses; he tips his face into the spray and lets it scald closed eyelashes until he can’t feel anything but the water and the heat, and then he runs fingers through his hair.  
  
After, he steps out, scrubbing the towel over his hair and then giving up—it’ll dry however it pleases in any case—and ensconcing himself in plush cotton. Of course he’s forgotten to bring spare clothing into the bathroom; he sighs, not out loud, and opens the door.  
  
Chris is sitting on the side of the bed, wearing the robe—wearing Sebastian’s robe from the previous night, in fact, because the other one’s still hung on the inside of the bathroom door. This comprehension short-circuits his brain for a few vital seconds.  
  
He takes some solace in the fact that Chris, having looked up as the door opened, doesn’t seem to have any words either. Might be good or bad—Sebastian’s fairly certain his bare torso isn’t hideous, he does go to the gym, but he’s never had anyone just _stare_ at him post-shower before—but at least they’re on the same footing as regards verbal abilities.  
  
Annoyingly, he feels more naked than when he’d _been_ naked. He takes a step forward, because that’s ridiculous, and promptly smacks his shoulder on the frame of the door.  
  
“Oh, _du-te la dracul_ —”  
  
Chris bolts to his feet, hands out. “Are you—”  
  
“Fine, fuck, sorry, ow—” He gives up pretending it doesn’t hurt and rubs at his shoulder. Not as if Chris hasn’t seen him stripped bare and pleading and undignified. “Well, that was idiotically painful. Sorry, sir.”  
  
Chris opens his mouth, closes it, shakes his head. “Can I see?”  
  
“Oh…yes, of course…you know you don’t have to ask for permission, sir.”  
  
“Yeah, you know, I kinda think I do.” Chris comes over, runs careful large hands over him. “You’re going to bruise.”  
  
“That happens.”  
  
“You walk into doors a lot? Also, what’d you say?”  
  
“Doors, lamp-posts, inconvenient furniture…ow…ah, I believe I told the door to go to the devil. Which since we are in a temple is no doubt blasphemous. Though I’m sure it’s heard worse.” He looks up at the same instant Chris does. Their eyes catch.   
  
Chris’s hand’s warm and anxious on his arm. Chris’s eyes are blue as summer skies.  
  
“I’m all right,” Sebastian tells him, very quietly, not looking away. Chris nods. “You are.”  
  
“I am.”  
  
“You said you like saying my name.”  
  
“I do. Chris.”  
  
“Sebastian…can I kiss you?”   
  
“Yes,” Sebastian says, “yes, please,” and Chris’s hand slides up to tangle in his shower-wet hair, holding him in place; and Chris’s mouth comes down over his with desperate joyous force, claiming and wanting and seemingly intent on sweeping all rational thought away.  
  
Sebastian lets himself be swept. Chris kisses him as if he’s fresh water in the desert, a floating spar from a shipwreck; Chris kisses with nothing held back, all big hands and fire and need. Chris’s lips travel from his bottom lip to the corner of his mouth; Chris’s voice rumbles, “Mine,” and Sebastian’s knees wobble. Chris growls and pushes him—tenderly—up against the wonderful door; Sebastian’s dimly aware that his towel-knot’s coming undone, and he doesn’t give a damn, because Chris’s kisses are scorching and Chris’s hand’s tight in his hair, just the right side of pain, and he’s falling into the swirl of sensation.  
  
Chris pulls away, slowly, hips pressed into his. Sebastian, feeling that delicious cock rub against his own, whimpers.   
  
“Right,” Chris declares, all Dominant assertion mingled with earnest sweetness, “just so you know how much I want you, because you looked like maybe you didn’t, and you did say I could kiss you.”  
  
“Wait…you’re not…what…”   
  
“My turn to shower. And then talk.”  
  
“… _what?”_  
  
“Nope, you can wait.” Chris grins, looking far too satisfied for someone with so insistent an erection. “Go sit on the bed. Naked. Five minutes.”  
  
“What,” Sebastian says again, because apparently he’s forgotten every other word in his English vocabulary.  
  
“I,” Chris says airily, “have self-control. Not that I’m saying this isn’t fun, because it so is.”  
  
Sebastian narrows eyes at him.   
  
Chris laughs.   
  
Sebastian waits until his Dominant has moved a step away—no further, just enough—and drops the towel entirely. And then drops to his knees. Which puts his mouth at just the right level to be filled by Chris’s cock.  
  
Chris blinks.   
  
Sebastian arches an eyebrow.  
  
“Hmm,” Chris says, and then, “okay, but we are gonna talk, and also this isn’t exactly being obedient, I did give you an order, so I think…I think you get to use that mouth, and you don’t get to come at all, okay?”  
  
Sebastian actually feels his lips part, feels the gasp, at that command. The world shivers like harpsong. The waters part, and tremble.  
  
“Say yes,” Chris asks, irresistible question. Sebastian whispers, “Yes, sir,” and the waves close in, liquid and sweet and so fast, like nothing he’s felt with anyone else, like nothing he’s felt ever.  
  
Chris puts hands into his hair and holds him in place. Pushes into him inch by inch, cock so thick it fills him until he can barely breathe, eyes watering. And then doesn’t move, keeping him there.  
  
Sebastian moans as best he can around the obstruction, eyes fluttering shut, tasting Chris on his tongue. Chris orders, “Hands behind your back,” and he complies, every muscle saturated with slow-burning languor. And Chris fucks his mouth, his throat, relentless but not unkind, hard but in the way that’s splendid, exactly how he needs to feel.  
  
“So good—” Chris pants, pausing, fingers sliding to his face. The next thrust’s sideways enough to push into his cheek from the inside; Chris strokes him from the outside, the shape of himself stretching out Sebastian’s mouth. Sebastian’s lightheaded, not so much from lack of air as from the dizzying onslaught of possession. Chris trails fingers over his cheekbone, his eyebrow; he can only whine and beg for more, cock nearly an afterthought between his thighs, though he can feel the heavy throbbing center of need hanging there. The ache’s omnipresent and glorious, though, and he knows he won’t be allowed to come, so he simply relaxes into the sensations as they wash through his body, as his Dominant uses him for pleasure.  
  
“Fuck,” Chris is saying, voice dazed, cracking, “Sebastian—you—oh God I’m—” and he is, flooding the back of Sebastian’s throat with climax, too deep for any reaction other than swallowing, choking—so _much_ —and shuddering in delirious bliss.  
  
Chris is still talking, babbling, saying his name; that so-thick cock slips free of his mouth, resting over his lips, smearing sticky drops across him. He knows his face will be messy with it, Chris’s come and his own saliva, and he doesn’t care, lost in brightness.   
  
“Seb—” Chris stops, breathless. Falls to knees beside him. “God. You—you—that—oh God—are you all right, was that okay, can you look at me, because, fuck—”  
  
He looks up. Chris has both arms around him. That feels good.   
  
“If you want,” Chris says, getting breath back, “I can, we can, for you, I mean—that was—you should get to feel—”  
  
“No,” Sebastian says, word rough and perfect, whole body peacefully strung out in exquisite denial, “you said not me, and…and you were right, sir, I needed that…later, please, yes, please. But this is—right.”  
  
Chris breathes in, a single inhale that sounds shaky and hushed and almost painful. “You—you’re incredible. You know that, or you should, but I’m gonna tell you anyway, okay? Can you stand? Bed?”  
  
“I think so…” In truth he probably can’t, but those strong arms aren’t leaving him, so he can handle the short distance. Chris tucks him into sheets and pillows, keeping him warm; jumps off the bed, sprints to the bathroom, comes back with a wet cloth, cleans his face. Sebastian closes his eyes—he could get used to this, being pampered by his Dominant—and the next instant finds a leftover orange section being waved in front of his face. “Eat.”  
  
That’s an order, no room for disobedience. He does. He feels hyperaware of everything: the sharp sweetness of the juice, the flesh of the fruit, the proximity of Chris’s skin, the drag of cool sheets over his own thighs and hips. He does want to come, but there’s no urgency to the need, simply drifting.  
  
Chris pets his arm after the orange-feeding, almost absentmindedly, fingers rubbing along the softer inner skin below his elbow. Sebastian wonders hazily whether Chris is aware of the motion. He certainly wouldn’t mind being petted by his Dominant on a daily basis, if this helps Chris think.  
  
“Better?”   
  
“Ah…yes. More…here, if that’s what you mean.” He licks his lips, tasting tropical juices. “That was…is…deeper than…I don’t usually go down that far that fast.” Or ever. Subspace, yes. Not like this. Not like this, with Chris.  
  
“You looked…” Chris breathes out. “I don’t even have words. We need to talk before we do that again. You’d’ve said yes to anything, there.”  
  
“Not _anything_. But…yes. I know what you mean.” Each word helps. Tiny anchors. Not quite resurfacing, and he’s guessing Chris doesn’t want him all the way up, but coherent. “You’re very good.”  
  
“Me.” Chris actually snorts, which shouldn’t be adorable but is. “Okay. Will you be all right if I jump in the shower? I’ll leave the door open.”  
  
“Ye-es…”  
  
“Not exactly convincing. More, or less?”  
  
“More, please.”  
  
Chris glances around. Gets that excited grin again. “Got it. Left arm?”  
  
“What—oh.” Chris is playing with the closest white silk rope, already tied to the bedpost. “Only one?”  
  
“I am _not_ leaving you tied up and trapped while I’m in the shower. Only one.”  
  
“That’s not even a decent knot!”  
  
“Are you complaining, sub?” Chris emphasizes this with a brief tap of fingers over his cheek; not enough to even sting, but Sebastian shivers regardless. “Good. Stay put. Unless you need to get up, of course.”  
  
“ _Fiul de o vacă,_ ” Sebastian mutters, not really meaning it, tugging at his wrist and loving the resistance. “Go on, then.”  
  
“What did you call me,” Chris says, and swoops in to kiss him, a fleeting giddy whirlwind gesture that sets off vertiginous flocks of butterflies in his stomach, ludicrous as schoolboy infatuation. “Does that have to be a rule? Be sarcastic in languages I know?”  
  
“Son of a cow. Hurry _up_.”  
  
“Be patient.” Chris kisses his nose. “And, come on, some sort of big cat at least. Something cool.”  
  
“Golden retriever,” Sebastian decides, and contemplates throwing the nearest pillow.  
  
Chris gets off the bed. Then comes back and moves the pillow out of reach. “I feel safer now.”  
  
“I have no idea what you mean. I would most certainly never hit my Dominant with a feathery object.” He widens eyes at Chris. Guilelessly.   
  
“That,” Chris announces, “should be illegal. Deadly weapon. You could get away with murder, with those eyes. You _are_ feeling better, then.”  
  
“Oh,” Sebastian says, “yes,” and then runs out of words, because this, all of this, has been Chris taking care of him.  
  
Even if Chris doesn’t love him, even if Chris can never love him, Chris cares about him.   
  
The sunshine spills rays across the floorboards, across the bed, across the cord around his wrist.   
  
And he wonders whether he’s in love, whether he can possibly have fallen in love in a day and a night and a morning, and what he’ll do if he is in love, or beginning to be; if he’s in love with a man whose heart won’t ever be his in return.  
  
And then he thinks that it doesn’t matter, because he won’t let it matter. He’ll be a good submissive and a good husband for Chris because Chris deserves that. He can make Chris smile; he already has. That’ll be enough.   
  
If he’s in fact falling in love, that’s beyond anything he ever had a right to expect. He can’t expect even _more_.  
  
“Five minutes,” Chris says, and goes. Once the water’s on, Sebastian turns his hand, wrapping fingers into white silk until it bites back. Lines across his skin.  
  
He’s getting lost in his own head, and he knows it. He’d meant it when he’d told Chris he didn’t fall under that easily—he never has before, it’s always taken more, more pain and pleasure and toys and intensity, on the few rare occasions he’s let himself indulge—and he’s feeling the repercussions now. Chris left—only for the shower, of course, and rationally he knows as much—and he’s alone, and he wants to be held and told that he’s safe, that he’s done well, that he’s done this right.   
  
Chris told him he was good, offered to reward him, cared about his wellbeing; but Chris wants someone else, wanted someone else. Chris told him they needed to talk, but left his arm tied; he’s caught between the need to cry and the need to stay still as ordered and the need to feel.  
  
His fingers, wound in silk, are starting to go numb.

He doesn’t hear the shower flip off. Doesn’t notice when Chris steps into the doorway, stops in shock, and then runs across the room.   
  
He does notice when all those muscles land on the bed beside him, anxious and angry. “Sebastian—what—here, let go, let me untie that, let me—what the fuck—”  
  
He shakes his head. And the tears win out, and he ends up in Chris’s arms, sobbing.  
  
Chris murmurs his name, strokes his hair, rubs his back, says quiet frightened comforting words; Sebastian can hear the heartbeat under his ear where his head’s resting on that broad chest. It’s fast and frightened too, belying the confident tone. But that fear helps somehow, some way he can’t articulate. Chris cares. Chris is worried too, afraid of doing or saying the wrong thing. Chris is back and here and wanting to hold him.  
  
He cries for a while, long enough to lose track of time, but he feels strangely lighter after, weightless yet grounded by strong arms. Chris is sitting up against the headboard, with Sebastian more or less in his lap; the sunshine’s made it to the foot of the bed and is communing with the tall posts there. When he blinks, dust motes twinkle like daytime stars.  
  
“I was going to ask you what happened,” Chris says, voice low and self-castigating and claiming all the guilt on both their parts, “but I thought about it, and of course I fucked up, didn’t I? I left you. I’m sorry.”  
  
“No…don’t…I said I was all right. I am all right.” He tilts his head to look his Dominant in the eye. “You believed me. And I didn’t expect…that’s never quite happened. Not like that.” He’s self-aware enough to suspect why. He’s never cared so much, before. And never been so far from okay.  
  
“Never…” Chris catches one last tear as it slides down his cheek, diamond sparkling briefly before drying up. “I should’ve known. I saw you. And I’m not, you know, the most experienced guy in the world, but you’ve only ever let yourself—oh, fuck, sorry, I mean, I don’t actually know about your experience, but…”  
  
“No, you’re right.” He lets himself soak up Chris’s strength, Chris’s generosity. “Twice a year. Always different clubs. The sorts of places where no one asks questions, where it doesn’t matter if you’d have to wear a collar on the street outside, where no one cares as long as you tell them what you want and you’re willing to pay to get in…I always thought I needed it to hurt. To get there. But it’s different with you.”  
  
Chris’s mouth’s gone tight. “You thought you needed to be hurt? To go down?”  
  
“Not like…I don’t mean I thought I deserved to be hurt. I only…I was so scared, the first time, that something would go wrong, I’d get caught, someone would find out and I’d have to go public.” Someone had, of course. Why they’ve ended up here. He’s not sure now that he regrets it. “I couldn’t get into the right headspace, as much as I wanted to. Finally the two men I was with simply went for…let’s say overwhelming physical sensation. Getting me out of my head and into the moment. It worked. So I thought…”  
  
“So you thought you had to.” Chris sighs. Cups Sebastian’s cheek in one hand. “Do you still think that?”  
  
“No. But…I am confused.” He’d shrug, but he’s being held. “I’ve felt worse, after, but…”  
  
“But you needed me here. I _am_ sorry.”  
  
“I think I did, but I didn’t know how to ask you.” That’s not all of it, not the deeper lonely heart-wound, but it’s a part. “You were magnificent. Food, keeping me warm, asking how I was. And now. I believe I’m more or less all right, sir.”  
  
“Are you?” Chris captures his hand. Studies red marks, now fading. “Did you need to feel it more, or were you thinking you weren’t good enough?”  
  
Both and neither; and Chris’s tone says clearly that it’d better not be the latter, and if it was then whoever’d given Sebastian that idea would be paying for it in bruises.   
  
“I wasn’t sure what you wanted,” he opts for, which is also true if marginally evasive. “You said we needed to talk, and I can’t be that deeply in subspace if we’re going to talk, but I wasn’t feeling…you also said you’d take care of me later and I wanted to come back and talk to you if you were asking but I couldn’t think…you tied me up because I asked but that made it worse, because I wanted to stay there forever, and I knew you’d be disappointed if I couldn’t answer questions. I have no idea whether any of those words made sense.”  
  
“They did. You did. And I should’ve known better.” Chris scrubs a hand over his eyes, brushing away some hidden emotion, some sorrow or guilt or relief. “We’re gonna have a very long discussion about you telling me when I’m an idiot, okay? Not now, because we’ve got—fuck—two hours left in this room and we have to work out a couple practical things. But soon.”  
  
“We might both be idiots,” Sebastian considers, cradled in his Dominant’s embrace. “I forgot to thank you for the orange. And the blankets. I do like being warm.”  
  
“I’ve noticed.” There’s a smile returning to New England skies. “Sunshine and blankets and me. I’m married to a kitten.”  
  
“I’d argue, but I’m very comfortable at the moment. I may even purr.”  
  
Chris makes a sound that starts as a laugh and ends with another swipe of hand over eyes. “You’re fuckin’ amazing. Do you feel up to talking? If I pet you?”  
  
“Yes to both, please.”   
  
“So polite,” Chris observes, hand already in motion, gently rubbing his back, the nape of his neck, the line of his spine. Long deliberate strokes; Chris really is petting him, Sebastian concludes, amused.   
  
But it’s nice. So he doesn’t object.  
  
“This is gonna be complicated,” Chris murmurs, after a few moments of silent indulgence. “I like you being polite, and I like you being sarcastic, and I like being able to touch you…you feel good, y’know? I don’t know, is that stupid?”  
  
“No. You like…touching things.” He’s certain of that much, even in so short a time. Chris Evans is a tactile, physical, demonstrative person. Sebastian, who’s never been opposed to being touched but has generally gone through life hesitant to assume intimacy where none might be wanted, is currently discovering how much he adores being held.  
  
Chris’s hand pauses. “You’re not a thing.”  
  
“What? No, I meant…” He’d wave a hand, but he’s too lazy to move. “English is a terrible language. You like touching things and people. If you would like to touch me, I have no objections.”  
  
“That’s not the same as wanting it.” The hand’s continued hovering.  
  
“Oh, really, sir…very well. Yes, I like you touching me. You may continue to touch me. If you would like to make that some sort of order, one of my duties—is that right? duties?—I would not be displeased. Better?”  
  
Chris, surprised, laughs. Sebastian permits himself a tiny smug smile, tucked away where his Dominant most likely won’t see.  
  
“Yeah, okay,” Chris says, “it’s an order, then. You let me touch you, whenever I want, however I want. Naked, if I want. Unless you actively don’t want me to, in which case say so, and I won’t. But I’m gonna assume consent to be touched if you say yes now, until you say otherwise. Also don’t pretend you’re not smiling, because you are. I like seeing you smile.”  
  
“Oh…yes, sir. Ah. To both.”  
  
“Good,” Chris says, and Sebastian can’t help flushing a bit all over at the praise. “Okay. So…practical things. They’ll come kick us out of here in about ninety minutes and we sort of need somewhere to go. So, living arrangements first.”  
  
He can’t keep the surprise out of his own voice, at that. “I thought I’d be moving in with you!”  
  
“Do you want to?”  
  
“I…” Sebastian flounders, footing unstable in shifting sands. The day before he’d’ve said no. And yet, and yet. Chris’s hand’s supportive and comforting at the small of his back. He takes refuge in certainties. “Don’t I have to? Legally?”  
  
“Actually, technically, no. I mean, yeah, you have to live with me, but not necessarily _with_ me.”  
  
Sebastian stares at him and the bewildering prepositions. Chris tries again. “You can’t have property in your name, but I could set you up in a place of your own and not share a household?”  
  
“Wouldn’t that…look suspicious,” Sebastian manages, and tries not to think about Chris not wanting him, not wanting to live with him.  
  
“Yeah, I just—no, you’re right, it’s mostly rich people bored with their arranged marriages who do that. And I’m not bored with you.”  
  
“…thank you?”  
  
“Fuck,” Chris says. “I mean I did mean it about wanting to touch you. I mean I want to live with you. I just wanted to give you the option. I want you to know you have options. I’m sorry, I’m doing this completely wrong, I’m a moron.”  
  
“No, you’re not, sir,” Sebastian says, and then, meaning it this time, “thank you. I think I want to live with you as well. And I assume the immediate problem is where we go today?”  
  
“Yeah. You know I have a place in Boston.”  
  
“Yes…”  
  
“You live here, right? New York?”  
  
That’d been why his mother’d fought for—and been granted—the right to have the ceremony here. “Yes.”  
  
“You, um.” Chris shifts weight uneasily. “You know you can’t…your place…you’ll have to…”  
  
He can’t keep property in his name. If they’re going to live together, he’ll have to move in with Chris. To give up his home. To give up— “I know, sir.”  
  
Chris starts to speak. Shakes his head. Starts over. That Boston-history voice is tentative, fearful of firing the irrevocable shot. “Do you…care about your place? Right now?”  
  
It’s the only place he’s ever chosen for himself. It’s not his childhood home in Constanţa, it’s not his and his mother’s first refuge in Vienna, it’s not the welcoming expensive-shabby arms of his stepfather’s colonial house in upstate New York. It’s not even university housing at Rutgers and a roommate perpetually lost in weed and incomprehensible personal philosophy.   
  
It’s his.  
  
That grief sticks in his throat, a golf-ball knot of mourning even though he’s not put a single item in a box, preemptive and arrow-final. He nods, because Chris is waiting for a reply.  
  
Chris doesn’t look pleased, though. Sebastian looks down, studying for lack of any better object the knob of his own knee, unattractive ungainly too-long bones. He’s not sure what to say. How to begin to explain. How to make his Dominant happy again, when he feels like crying inside, but only inside, rainfall in his veins.  
  
Chris holds out the hand that’s not petting his back. Palm up. Creeping into his peripheral vision on the bed between them. It’s not an order.  
  
Sebastian pulls his gaze away from the contemplation of his own inadequacies. Chris’s eyes are concerned and compassionate and not angry.   
  
He puts his fingers into that hand. Chris smiles, bittersweet but more hopeful than not. “I’m sorry. Of course you love it, you picked it, you have money, you could pick anywhere—oh, fuck, we have to talk about that too—right now, though, I’m sorry. I wouldn’t ask if we didn’t have to.”  
  
“I know.” He does. It would mean too much, be too blatant a denial of society and the contract, for them to do otherwise. “It’s too small anyway. You wouldn’t—it only fits me.”  
  
“It fits you.” Chris sounds sad, this time. His fingers curl more closely, apparently unconsciously, around captive ones.  
  
Sebastian takes a deep breath. Maybe, maybe.   
  
He squeezes back. And then tries to say those words. Everything he’s been thinking. Out loud.  
  
Chris’s expression changes as he talks, but no interruptions shove their way in, only a tighter and tighter grip. Sebastian, somewhat to his own astonishment, finds a tiny sneaky thrill scampering up his arm in response. Chris is holding onto him. Chris doesn’t want to let him go. Chris’s hand might leave bruises around his fingers, indelible marks; he wants them on his wrists, his hips, his thighs, every piece of his soul that’s never known until now how badly it aches to be claimed.  
  
Chris waits until he’s finished, then blinks a few times, rapidly. “Fuck.”  
  
“Ah…is that an order?” He’s teasing, cautiously attempting to coax a smile; he knows as well as Chris does that there’s nothing to be done. They may as well face it grinning. “Sir?”  
  
“No!” Chris bites his lip. Looks at their hands. “And—shit—am I hurting you?”  
  
Of all the questions he’s been imagining, that’s nowhere on the list, which is why the answer comes out more confused than certain. “No?”  
  
“I fuckin’ asked you to be—”  
  
“I am being honest! I—oh, _mama dracului,_ here—” He puts his other hand atop Chris’s. Keeping it in place. Firmly. “I’d tell you if I didn’t like it. I do. Sir. Chris.”  
  
“You do.”  
  
“ _Yes_. Would you like it in Romanian? French? German? Yes, I like your hands on me. Do that more.”  
  
Chris now looks startled, but the kind of startlement that’s next-door to laughter. “So that’s gonna be how this works? Should I be getting on my knees for you?”  
  
“Perhaps at some point we could discuss it,” Sebastian says as loftily as he can, and then can’t keep a straight face through it, and taps fingers over the back of Chris’s hand. “No. I’m yours and I think I like that. Even if you do snore like a mountain goat lost halfway across the Carpathians.”  
  
“I do not! —a _mountain_ goat? Seriously?”  
  
“How would you know, sir?”  
  
“…are you doing this on purpose?” Chris, voice oddly balanced between laughter and awareness, stares at him. “You are, aren’t you?”  
  
Sebastian thinks about trying for wide-eyed and innocent, but chooses honesty. Wholly so, every syllable. “Yes. I don’t want you to feel sad for me over this. I knew what I was signing. I know what this entails. And if you’re thinking about pitying me in regards to my supposedly deprived and traumatic childhood, please don’t do that either, sir. My childhood is…what it is. And I am here now with you. Because I said yes to you, Chris Evans. And I said it again last night, and I knew what I was saying. Don’t take that away from me.”  
  
Chris’s eyes have gotten wider and brighter, shine not only from the glare of the sun. And that hand closes more forcefully around his. That’s an answer, too, even before Chris breathes, “Did I say you were amazing, because you’re fuckin’ _miraculous_.”  
  
Well. Sebastian can’t hide the surprise. That’s not a word he’d choose.  
  
“You _are_.” That voice’s forceful as well. Revolutionary pamphlets and calls to arms, summoned in his defense. “You—fuck no, I don’t pity you, I’m just—why did you even pick me? You deserve—I don’t know, a prince or something—”  
  
He has to laugh. “I thought that. About you.”  
  
“…what?”  
  
“More accurately, I thought…this wasn’t a fairy-tale. Us. But it might’ve been. Someplace else. Some other world. I once thought about writing an opera…we don’t have Prince Charming in Romania, not exactly. We have Făt-Frumos—the Beautiful Son—in all the stories he’s given impossible, obscure, confusing choices. Sometimes painful. Sometimes he doesn’t understand the choice until it’s too late. Am I saying this right? In English?”  
  
“Yeah.” Chris is watching him talk as if each word is both a miniature miracle and a tiny stab wound. “You feel that way about us? Confusing, and painful…”  
  
“The point is that it never matters what he chooses.” Sebastian lets himself lean in. Chris folds the arm more closely around him. “He asked an old woman for advice, once, on his way to seek the fire-breathing _zmei_. He was lost. She told him, if you turn right you will find sorrow, and if you turn left you will find sorrow as well.”  
  
“So…it ends in sorrow,” Chris whispers. “Either way.”  
  
“Oh. No. Not at all. It ends happily. He rescues a princess from the _zmei_ and they fall in love. But that’s not the point; I did say. The point is that he makes a choice and follows through on that choice even if it hurts. And he’s rewarded, in the end. For not giving up when he knows his path will hurt.”  
  
“You never wrote the opera.”  
  
“Not yet.” Sebastian shrugs, one-shouldered because the other one’s pressed up against Chris. “I have time.”  
  
“What if,” Chris says, holding his hand, holding him, weight reliable as a furnace, “we found a place together? Here in New York? What if I stay with you in your place—just for a couple days, people’ll get that, it’s practical—and we go look at apartments and we pick something out that we can maybe both love?”  
  
The words take a moment to sink in. And then he’s nodding, afraid he’s about to cry again, emotions too ragged and overused already, voice trapped someplace between _yes please_ and _I’m sorry I’m so difficult for you_ and _I think I love you_.  
  
“Shh,” Chris says, and maneuvers the other hand up to the back of his head, cradling his skull. “Come on, you were just doin’ this for me, making me feel better about—you can cry, go on, I know it’s been a hell of a morning, for me too, okay? Want another orange?”  
  
“I don’t suppose,” Sebastian fumbles out around the sob that does _not_ emerge from his throat, “there’re blueberries…”  
  
“I…don’t think so. You like blueberries? I’d’ve asked for that, if I’d known, I want to know that kind of stuff, so tell me.”  
  
“…yes, sir?”  
  
“I mean it. So you like chocolate, you like blueberries…I’d offer to make you pancakes, but I’m not allowed to try to cook. Ask my brother sometime about the Great Jell-O Disaster of 2002. Seriously, it’s, like, a genetic deficiency. Severe Kitchen Impairment. But I can buy you every kind of berry you want.”  
  
“I’m supposed to cook for you,” Sebastian says, feeling exhausted, feeling wrung out, feeling like he wants to leave his head on Chris’s shoulder forever. “Sir.”  
  
“ _Can_ you cook?”  
  
“Ah…define cooking. I can handle pasta and saucepans and spices. I would not have the faintest idea how to cope with an entire uneviscerated turkey. I hope you’re not expecting exotic holiday banquets.”  
  
“Not even. And that’s not any kind of order, me asking if you can, don’t take it as one. If you want to, sure, but that’s up to you.”  
  
“Well,” Sebastian says, closing his eyes, letting Chris’s shoulder hold him up, “I expect I ought to feed you. I’ve only just married you; I can’t let you simply wither away. I might have to go through this all over again.”  
  
“Oh—”  
  
He opens his eyes. “I’m joking, sir. I don’t mind cooking for us. Especially if you have any plans for future gelatin-related calamities.”  
  
“I didn’t plan that,” Chris says somewhat defensively. There’s relief beneath the defense. “It just sort of happened. I can follow directions, I swear, if you give me something specific to do.”  
  
This earns a pause. Sebastian’s ninety percent sure they’re both thinking about which one of them enjoys following specific directions. The sunbeams catch on the bedposts and shimmer reassuringly.  
  
Chris clears his throat. “…um. Okay. So. Your place, after this, and we’ll go house-hunting together. Next big thing, um, I hate to bring this up, but the second we walk out of here…because we did, um…”  
  
“Consummate the marriage?”  
  
“…yeah…so everything goes into effect as soon as they, y’know, confirm that I. You know.”  
  
Sebastian does know. Whether or not he himself got off is immaterial; the acolytes’ll be checking for signs that Chris took him, though, and claimed him. The traces should be obvious, will be obvious, on the sheets.   
  
He doesn’t shiver, not exactly, but it’s a bizarre vertiginous sensation. Desire and the descent of reality. They’ll leave this consecrated place and it’ll all still be true. Everything will change. Everything will change, forever.   
  
And even knowing that, the idea makes his breath quicken with want. He’s Chris’s. Inside and out. And everyone will know.   
  
He remembers the way Chris’s cock felt inside him. Sliding in and out, big and hot and hard, filling him up and pounding into that place inside his body where fireworks collected and burst…  
  
He licks his lips, shifts his legs, feels those muscles twitch and jump. They want to be reminded, too.  
  
He tries to remember what Chris just said. This is increasingly difficult. “…next big thing?”  
  
“Yeah.” Chris is gazing at him with an inscrutable expression. “Money.”  
  
“…oh.”  
  
“Are you okay?”  
  
“Ah…yes…fine, sorry. Money. Go on, sir.”  
  
“Hmm,” Chris says, eyes narrowing. And then grabs him and flips them both over on the bed until they end up sprawled out amid sheet-hills and valleys, Chris on his back, Sebastian definitively pinned down atop him by muscular arms. Chris tangles their legs together. They’re touching everywhere. So many places.  
  
“Better?”  
  
“Not if you want me to talk.”  
  
Chris grins, bright and happy. “What’d I say earlier about self-control? Try.”  
  
“Oh, _la naiba,_ ” Sebastian says. “Nonspecific relatively nicer devil, before you ask. Self-control, indeed.” Chris is also hardening against his hip. He can feel it.  
  
“Are there nicer devils? Is there like a devil hierarchy?”  
  
“Yes, and I suspect you belong among them. Are we still talking?”  
  
“Yep. We’ve got options, and I have an idea, but tell me what you’re thinking, first, okay?”  
  
Sebastian props his chin on Chris’s chest, cradled in one hand so as not to dig into a sternum. “Tell me what the options are, sir, and I might be able to in fact think about them.”  
  
“You secretly aren’t submissive at all, are you, you and the fuckin’ remarks,” Chris observes. Sebastian can’t entirely keep the look of dismay off his face; Chris laughs, lifts a hand, brings it down over the curve of his ass. Hard. No warning.   
  
The heat’s immediate and welcome and intoxicating, flooding his body with need. Chris looks inordinately pleased at this outcome. “…except for how you are.”  
  
“That,” Sebastian mutters, panting, wanting, “was utterly unfair, sir.”  
  
“I know. But you aren’t arguing, either. In a minute. You can wait. This is important.”  
  
This time he’s the one who sighs. “Yes, sir.”  
  
“We’ll make it quick.”  
  
“Yes, sir?”  
  
“Stop that, or I won’t be held responsible.” But Chris is tapping fingers over the new red mark, a rhythm and a reminder. “So. Money. We could be disgustingly traditional and I could control our accounts and you could ask me every time you want money for something—don’t try to find out what I’m thinking, I want to know what you think when I’m finished—”  
  
Sebastian obediently schools his expression into cooperative patience. Exaggerated for effect.  
  
“—or I could control the accounts and give you an allowance, or I could give you your own account that I have access to, where your income can go, direct deposit and all. Or I could give you your own account and let you change the password so no one else has access, even me.”  
  
Sebastian opens his mouth, but no sound in fact comes out for a second. “…isn’t that…terribly…radical? That last one.”  
  
“Yeah.” Chris is studying his face. “What do you want?”  
  
He should let Chris give him an allowance. The more traditional they are, the better; no rumors, no gossip about insufficient control over an independent submissive. But he needs access to his money. His parents need him to have access to his money.  
  
“…I think…if you wouldn’t mind…I’d like my own account.” And then, hastily, because he can’t read the expression in tidepool eyes, “but you can know the password. I don’t mind. And you might need to know. In emergencies.”  
  
Chris nods. Sebastian can’t tell whether that’s the answer he’s hoping for, or the complete opposite. “Okay. I can set that up. Last thing—there wasn’t gonna be, but you reminded me. Emergencies. Orders if I’m not around.”  
  
“Oh.” He feels, suddenly, very small. As if he is the _thing_ Chris said he wasn’t, earlier. Needing an owner.  
  
“I’m sorry.” Chris genuinely sounds and looks so. “But I have to designate someone, on paper. If I’m not there, not that I plan on not being there, but just in case. I’m thinking my mom, right, she’s our Family Head and she’s pretty much the nicest Dominant I know, she’ll probably just continuously feed you lasagna until I get back, but you need someone, and your family isn’t…I mean, they’re not…”  
  
Both his mother and his stepfather are baseline, yes. Not qualified. And there’s that other reason, too. The medical one, the one that means his stepfather might not even know his name. “That’s…fine.”  
  
“All that means is that you do what she tells you if it’s an emergency situation.” Chris taps fingers over his ass again. Squeezes this time. “Otherwise, you only obey me. No one else. Got it?”  
  
He’s not really thought Chris would allow anything else, but it’s comforting to hear nonetheless. “Yes, sir.”  
  
“Okay. So…” One more squeeze, harder; Sebastian gasps inadvertently, because yes, _yes_. “So we’re good for now. We’re gonna go over checklists and what you expect from me later tonight, and you can pick different safewords if you want, but for now, standard red, yellow, green?”  
  
“For now,” Sebastian echoes, attempting to keep up. He gets to have expectations? Opinions about how Chris uses him in bed? “Are you…are we…now?”  
  
“We are if you want to. Not a lot of time, so I’ll make it quick, but I did promise I’d take care of you.” Chris’s eyes meet his. “That’s a rule too. For me. So if you want to, I kind of want to see what happens when I properly spank you, sub.”  
  
“Oh,” Sebastian says, aware that even his voice sounds breathier. The sunlight’s found a home in Chris’s dark hair, turning it lighter, nearly the gold of his out-of-date biographical photo on his artist’s website. “Yes. I mean—yes, please.”  
  
  
 _Chris_  
  
They don’t have much time. That’s true. But they do have some time; and Chris has been watching his submissive’s eyes get huger and darker with every drum of fingers over the sensitive spot left from the first swat. Has been feeling Sebastian’s erection swell and rub against his stomach where they’re lying entwined.   
  
They both want this. Very much.  
  
“Up,” he says—does Sebastian know any proper positions, any of the physical training that subs get when they’re identified earlier?—and waits while his husband rolls off of him and off the bed entirely and lands on both feet, waiting.  
  
Chris gets up as well. Studies him leisurely, until Sebastian’s skin flushes pink beneath the tan, until those eyes drop. Not entirely comfortable being looked at, then; he’s not certain whether that’s innate reserve or learned behavior, a protective response to a history Chris only comprehends in bits and pieces. He wants to know it all; he wants Sebastian to never feel the need to withdraw around him.  
  
Besides, Sebastian’s his, now. And if Chris wants to memorize every astonishing inch of him, then that’s what they’re going to do.  
  
“Kneel,” he says, curious. His submissive looks up, and might be about to speak, but instead simply drops to the floor, sitting back on folded-up legs, hands in his lap, head bowed. So he does know that much; and Chris’s heart wavers between being pleased and being jealous of whoever’d had the training of him.  
  
He tests the next one—“Kneel up”—and Sebastian knows that too, flowing up onto both knees, hands behind his back. Chris considers this. “Present.”  
  
This time Sebastian hesitates. “I…”  
  
“Did I say talk?”  
  
“No, sir.” Pale aquamarine eyes are wide and trembling, caught between the long slow fall into splendid depths and the chilly knowledge that he might’ve displeased his Dom. Chris puts out a hand, lifts his chin. Sebastian looks up unhappily, but without actual fear, which is a good sign. Sebastian trusts him.  
  
“You never did formal training. Where’d you learn?”  
  
“I…at the clubs…sometimes they, whoever I was with…one of the early ones wanted me to know at least the first two…” Sebastian’s voice shakes. Tremors in the mountain pools. “I didn’t know anything, I just needed…she told me no one wanted an untrained sub, that I was useless but she’d take pity on me and teach me something…I never wanted to know, because if I knew that much then it meant I knew…”  
  
“It meant you knew what you were.” Chris keeps his own voice gentle with some effort. How anyone could look at Sebastian, so beautiful and courageous and willing, and call him useless— “I understand. But now you can. So I do expect you to learn. I don’t expect you to get it all right, or even to do most of it, but I want to know that you know standard commands if I give them.”  
  
Deeper, in the crevices and cracks of his heart, he wants Sebastian to know for his own sake. That sounds patronizing and awful even in his own head, and he’ll never say it aloud. But Sebastian responds so sweetly and so ardently to kindly given orders, to hands pinning him down, to assertions of possession; Sebastian _told_ him about never having felt this way, about believing that pleasure required pain. Sebastian has no idea, can have no idea, of how far he can go, of his own potential.   
  
And Chris wants him to know everything he can about what he is. Chris wants him to never have to be afraid of those responses. Never again.  
  
“Yes, sir,” Sebastian whispers, from his knees. His eyes are fixed on Chris’s face, blue dissolving into wide-blown black.  
  
“Present means you presenting yourself to me. Hands and knees.”  
  
“Oh—” A flicker of motion, caught almost before beginning. “Now?”  
  
“No. I wanted to know what you knew.” His fingers’re on Sebastian’s face, holding that chin up. He lets his grip tighten. Sebastian audibly inhales, lashes fluttering. The room’s timeless and anticipatory around them; the wood of the floor’s inviting and timeworn under Chris’s bare feet. “On the bed. Face down. Hands behind your neck.”  
  
Sebastian moves when Chris releases him; moves without answering, though Chris lets that go. He’s not a hundred percent sure Sebastian’s currently remembering how to speak English.  
  
He walks noiselessly over to the bed, and stands there beside all that golden skin, looking down. His sub doesn’t stir, because Chris hasn’t told him he can. Chris doesn’t touch him, not yet, though every bit of his body yearns to; having become once familiar with the sensations of Sebastian beneath him and around him, it’s craving more.  
  
He runs a hand thoughtfully along the smooth planes of that bared back. Sebastian quivers in place, but doesn’t disobey.  
  
Sebastian’s made of long legs and that long waist and expressive pianist’s fingers, a paradox of refinement and awkward grace, equally capable of tripping over stoic furniture and weaving melody into magic. Every gesture’s infused with a kind of unaware beauty. Chris wants to kiss him when he talks, when he tips that head, when he waves a hand.  
  
Sebastian’s breathing quickens, when Chris lays a palm over the right cheek of his perfect backside.  
  
“Legs apart,” he orders softly, and his submissive complies without protest. Chris walks fingertips over to that tempting crease, trailing one along sensitive skin. Sebastian gasps, too sudden to be entirely pleasure.  
  
Hmm. He says, “Wider,” and Sebastian tries to comply, spreading those thighs as far as possible, until they quiver with strain. Chris pats his hip: good, you’re good, we’re good. And then touches him more, carefully working fingers between the curves of his ass, keeping him open enough to inspect. Sebastian’s hands have gone white-knuckled where they’re laced behind his neck; but no objection’s forthcoming, and so he looks over every inch of vulnerable flesh at his leisure.  
  
Sebastian seems mostly unhurt from last night’s activities; that tiny hole is uninjured as far as he can tell, pink and clean from the shower, tight and dry because all the oil’s been washed away, tensing when Chris brushes a finger along the rim. “Does this hurt?”  
  
“I…no…not yet…”  
  
“Not yet?”  
  
“I don’t know…” That flexible voice ripples over consonants and vowels, harmonies tangled in desire and trepidation. “I feel…I don’t know, Chris, I’m sorry.”  
  
“Don’t apologize if it’s honest.” He presses his index finger _in_ , only a fraction, but Sebastian gasps again, and this time there’s a sob in it. “That—”  
  
“That hurts?” It’s not quite a no or a stop, though he’s hardly going to push if it doesn’t feel good. He leaves the finger in place, barely penetrating that tight ring, while muscles flutter around him.  
  
“I think…it’s only…it’s been…a long time, and then last night…you can fuck me if you want, sir.” Sebastian’s trembling everywhere. “I won’t mind. You won’t hurt me.”  
  
Chris sighs, but only inwardly. Slips the finger out; leaves his hand resting on the firm curve of his sub’s well-toned ass. “I like that you trust me, that’s good of you, thank you for that. But you said if I want to. Answer me honestly. Do you want me to fuck you? Right now? Would it feel good?”  
  
For a second he’s afraid Sebastian’s not going to answer, or worse, might be trying to think of a believable lie. But the answer’s truthful when it comes, admission wrapped in broken Romanian gold. “I think it would hurt. I think I’d feel good for…perhaps a moment…I sometimes like that, the hurt, you could make me come, I think I would…but after, maybe…not so good. Sir.”  
  
Not only honest, but more than he’d expected. With some intriguing revelations buried in the treasure-trove. Excavations for future jewel-hued moments. Undiscovered riches. He glances across the room, to the patient closed chest on the other side of the bed. They do have options. Toys.  
  
Not now. Not this morning. Sebastian’s trusted him with this confession; it’s Chris’s job to ensure that trust isn’t misplaced.   
  
He looks at his own hand, over exposed flesh. Digs fingertips in, all five, deliberately. He keeps his fingernails short, it makes sketching and brushwork easier, but that just means he has to press harder.  
  
Sebastian lets out a tiny moan, hips lifting into the pain, but shoulders and back and everywhere else seeming to soften and melt under the inundation.  
  
Chris doesn’t break skin—that’s a thing they’re going to discuss later, marks and scratches and limits—but regards his handiwork with satisfaction. Five neat crescents, burning red half-moons over pale gold skin. Sebastian’s _his_.  
  
When he leans over to check, Sebastian’s eyelashes are damp, but those hips arch into his hand again when he skims fingers over new marks. “You do like it to hurt,” he murmurs, gently, “sometimes, you said,” and Sebastian answers around a sob. “I like to feel it. To know that I’m…that this is…that I’m yours, sir, please.”  
  
“You are.” He bends down. Lips hovering over nail-bites. He knows wounded skin will feel each exhalation, every word. “I might make it hurt, then. Sometimes. If you ask me to. If I feel like it. But it doesn’t have to hurt. I can show you that you’re mine, I can make you feel it, in so many ways, sub. You got on your knees for me once already. I can keep you there all day if I want. I can tie you to the bed and make you come, over and over, until you can’t anymore, and then I’ll fuck you, and you’ll come again, from my cock inside you. Does that sound good to you? Like something you’d want?”  
  
Sebastian breathes, “Yes, sir,” on a slow exhale, a sound like heartfelt relief, like the yielding of long-held bow-strings, like reprieve from battle; Chris, not quite believing the fall can be that easy, the first time must’ve been a fluke, some lucky choice of words and actions, says, “Look at me, you can move your hands, just for a second,” and Sebastian does.  
  
It is that easy. Sebastian’s eyes are enormous and dreamy and not precisely focused, though they do find his and wait, peaceful as hyacinths, for command.  
  
Chris stands there and is astonished. And maybe just a little in love.  
  
It’s stupid and crazy and far too soon. But he’s thinking it anyway.  
  
Sebastian trusts him. Sebastian trusts him, and that’s also kind of stupid and crazy and so damn brave that Chris wants to cry, to admire him, to celebrate him in watercolor and oil and canvas, and then never sell that painting because that’s a secret for them alone.

He’s spent the morning being alternately more elated and terrified and anxious and hopeful than he can ever remember. It’s a rollercoaster of emotion with no safety belt. He’s afraid he’s barely hanging on, working from instinct and years-ago orientation classes and intuition. But Sebastian’s here with him, wanting to be kissed, wanting to be, God, spanked—  
  
If he’s barely hanging on, at least he’s doing that much right. Sebastian’d said as much: I don’t go down that far that fast, ever. Except with you. It’s different with you.  
  
Sebastian’s so lovely, and so complicated; just looking at him waiting there makes Chris’s chest hurt a little. Sebastian likes being held, being touched, he’s learning; Sebastian got on his knees without being ordered and accepted Chris’s previous decision regarding denial without a hint of complaint. Sebastian flinches sometimes—he probably thinks he’s hiding it, and he’s not bad at concealment, but those wide eyes give emotions away—when Chris says something idiotic without thinking.  
  
Sebastian promised to be here and let Chris touch him. Grounding in the face of panic attacks.  
  
Sebastian asked about his tattoos, inquisitive fingertips sliding across bare skin and making Chris weak-kneed while lying down.  
  
Sebastian _had_ flinched. When Chris had told him about Matt.  
  
Chris doesn’t know what to think about that. He’d said the words because Sebastian had asked. Because Sebastian was being so damn brave, trying so hard, opening up one bronze-petal layer of humor and kindness at a time because Chris’d asked. So Chris had clumsily tried to give him that much in return.  
  
Sebastian’s nothing like Matt. Matt had been straightforward and unhesitating, certain of whatever he wanted, whether that meant a new dirt bike or true love; Matt would’ve laughed for hours at the suggestion that Chris could actually take care of him, all the while sneaking a hand to the back of Chris’s neck for an unprompted massage in the face of interview-related apprehension. Matt would’ve never looked down and said _yes, Chris_ while wanting to say no. Still…  
  
Still, he thinks, they’d’ve gotten along. Something in the quirk of Sebastian’s smile when it’s allowed freedom. In the way Sebastian listens to his inept lumbering sentences and then comes up with the exact right reply, about fairy-tales and princes and heroic choices. Matt would’ve understood that fairy-tale story without needing to say a word; and then, a heartbeat later, would’ve asked him about dirty jokes in Romanian, smirking. Sebastian, Chris suspects, knows a few.   
  
They’d likely both tell him right now to stop thinking too much and start _doing_.   
  
He looks back at his submissive, spread out across the bed and awaiting his touch.  
  
“I want you,” he says, even though he’s fairly sure Sebastian can’t process non-command words through omnipresent floating bliss. The tone of voice might get through. And he needs to say it. “I just want you to know that. You’re beautiful, and I don’t want to hurt you, and I want you to smile at me, and I want you.”  
  
It’s not an order, so Sebastian simply gazes at him, lips parted, not comprehending. Chris breathes in, holds the breath in his lungs, lets it out. “I said I wanted to see what would happen if I spanked you. And you said yes. Tell me first where we are. Color.”  
  
Sebastian blinks once, slowly. “Green, sir.”  
  
Chris watches his face. If there’s any indication that that’s untrue, whether consciously so or not, he’ll stop. But those pale-horizon eyes are calm.  
  
“Okay. Only—” He throws a glance at the clock. Cringes. Time’s too swift. “—four. We’re not punishing you, you didn’t do anything wrong, I just want to try this, okay? Tell me if it hurts in a way you _don’t_ like.”  
  
“Yes,” Sebastian says. “Sir.”  
  
“Okay,” Chris says one more time, because that _yes, sir_ in that folklore-tinted voice is decimating his vocabulary. “Hips up.” And then he briefly panics, because what if Sebastian doesn’t know what he’s asking for; but long legs bend and pull up, presenting an absolutely splendid portrait of submission.  
  
Chris’s mouth goes dry with want. His cock, despite having been relieved once already this morning, aches, hard again and unsubtle. And his hand tingles, imagining the first encounter.   
  
The sunbeams have traveled smoothly off the bed and onto the floor. They tickle his bare toes. He’s memorizing every breath, every sensation, every shift of his own weight into a better position, every still short soft hair at the back of Sebastian’s neck.  
  
He lifts a hand.  
  
The impact makes them both gasp.  
  
He hadn’t been holding back, or not much—Sebastian did say yes—and the mark’s red and immediate, blooming carnations across fairness. The print of his hand, on Sebastian’s skin.  
  
Sebastian’s breaths fall shaken, but even and serene.  
  
Again. The other side, matching.  
  
This earns a groan, shuddering as if his submissive can’t help it. Chris scratches nails lightly over stinging marks. Sebastian whines, every muscle tensing, hips jerking forward. Chris slips a hand beneath him, finds his cock, grins. Sebastian’s stiff and dripping copiously across his hand, over the bed, slick with desire.  
  
“Can you come from this? Like this?” He wraps his hand around his submissive’s cock, stroking purposefully slow, up and down, unhurried. “While I spank you?”  
  
Sebastian, more or less face-down amid pillows, hands knotted into feathery fluff, nods.  
  
“Then,” Chris promises, “when I say four, you can,” and Sebastian whimpers quietly in acquiescence.  
  
Three. He keeps his other hand toying with Sebastian’s cock, mingling pain and pleasure. Sebastian’s panting, sweat beginning to shine in the hollow of his back. Chris wants to kiss him, to lick at his skin, to taste him; amazed, he remembers that he can, and so he leans down and touches lips to the fading bruises of his fingernails, swiping his tongue over searing indentations.  
  
Sebastian makes a sound. Chris can’t even begin to describe it. Desperation, need, pleading, surrender.  
  
One more. His hand snaps down over Sebastian’s ass, even harder this time; the collision leaves shockwaves both tangible and not all through his body, and he rubs his thumb along the underside of Sebastian’s cock, over the slit, coaxing out more moisture; and he whispers, “Four,” and Sebastian comes on a gasp that might’ve been his name or no word at all, hot pulses of climax pouring out over his hand and spilling onto sheets beneath.  
  
Sebastian’s legs give way. Chris shoves him flat on the bed, kneels over him, rubs hands over burning expanses of skin, fits his cock between those superheated curves, rocking into him. Sebastian moans, lost in exquisite anguish and ecstasy and use; Chris pants, “Not gonna fuck you—not gonna _hurt_ you, not like this, I just want—I’m going to come all over you, on you, all _mine_ , you hear me?” and Sebastian moans again and that one _is_ his name and a yes—  
  
Chris comes all at once, at that. Lightning, striking without warning, coiling up and bursting outward. His come splashes Sebastian’s skin, his own handprints. White over red finger-lines. He nearly comes again, or maybe that’s just more, dwindling spurts pulled out of him by the sight.  
  
More. Because Sebastian makes him feel more. Because with Sebastian he _is_ more.   
  
He’s inclined to collapse, himself—he feels shaky everywhere, like a newborn colt—but he has the presence of mind to flop sideways onto the bed and pull his submissive into his arms and stroke dark hair with one exhausted hand. Sebastian’s crying softly, but not in a bad way, he thinks, insofar as he can think with all his brain cells having been replaced by orgasm.  
  
“Are you,” he starts, and forgets words. “You. Color. Order.”  
  
“Green,” Sebastian whispers. And, to his everlasting surprise, lips brush his collarbone in a kiss. “Yours, Chris.”  
  
“Did I. That was. Good?”  
  
Sebastian nods against his chest, not crying now, or not as much.   
  
“Good.”  
  
“I think…sir…I like…you trying things.”  
  
Chris laughs.   
  
And in that second, Sebastian cradled securely against his body, the ebbing tidal wave leaving him drained and euphoric and fulfilled, Sebastian’s smile—and that is a smile, Chris can feel it—curving along his skin—  
  
He _knows_ he’s in love.  
  
He wants to laugh again, or, inexplicably, weep. He wants to pull his heart out of his chest, where it’s no longer contained anyway, and put it into Sebastian’s hands.  
  
It’s kind of a disturbing mental image, but it’s true nonetheless. He spares a second to wonder about his brain, and then that turns into wondering how he can get Sebastian to be in love with him, most likely not by means of offered-up internal organs.  
  
He runs the not-sticky hand through Sebastian’s hair again. Sebastian makes a contented kittenish noise and sticks his nose into Chris’s neck. Chris ends up grinning broadly at the ceiling. It grins back. It’s given them this space. It’s done its job.   
  
Of course Sebastian doesn’t love him, not yet. But Sebastian’s not in love with anyone else, either; and _did_ agree to marry him. That gives him some kind of advantage. A starting-point.  
  
He knows some things those winter-gemstone eyes enjoy. Blueberries. Chocolate. Folklore. Music. Being spanked and held down and claimed and _wanted_ , in bed. He can do all of that. He’s not naïve enough to believe that’ll equal love, but it can’t hurt. At least he can try.  
  
He kisses the top of Sebastian’s head. His submissive wakes up enough to say, “Mmm.”  
  
Chris nudges tousled dark hair with his nose, just because. “Are you awake? We’ve sort of got…oh God, thirty-two minutes, fuck, fuck, can you get up? Or—no, no, wait, don’t move—”  
  
He eases Sebastian down into the bed. Sprints to that chest. Flings items around. Ah.  
  
Sebastian’s up on both elbows, though still on his stomach, eyes regaining focus and interested. Chris grabs a towel. Runs back. Flips open the top of the bottle. “Hold still. And let me clean you up first. I sort of…”  
  
“Came all over me?”  
  
Chris chokes on a nonexistent dust speck. “…yes. Fuck. Don’t say things like that unless you want me to jump on you. Again.”  
  
Sebastian’s lips curve into that wonderful impish expression. “I shall have to remember that in the future, sir.”  
  
“You said my name,” Chris says, hands busy, warm water and cloth gingerly wiping dried come and sweat from tender skin. “I like that. Maybe use that more. Less sir. If you feel like it.”  
  
The smile turns surprised, reflective, wondering. “Yes, Chris.”  
  
“I definitely like that. This might feel cold.”  
  
Sebastian sucks in a breath. Hisses something in a language Chris doesn’t know. “What—”  
  
“It’s meant to be cooling. Healing. I told you I don’t want to hurt you. Better now?”  
  
“I think yes… _oh_ yes. Thank you.” The creamy green scents of aloe and mint and arnica drift up around them. Sebastian’s skin accepts restorative salve readily, as Chris’s fingers rub it slightly guiltily over bruises. For good measure, he smoothes some over Sebastian’s shoulder, the one that’d had the close encounter with the bathroom door. Sebastian smothers a laugh in pillow-fluff. “I’d forgotten about that…”  
  
“The only bruises on you should be the ones we both want there,” Chris says mock-sternly, and blue eyes surface from the pillow to sparkle at him. “I can live with that.”  
  
“Well,” Chris says, lost in the sparkle, “good,” and proceeds to forget that he has salve on his fingertips as he tries to close the bottle, consequently loses his grip, tries to hold on tighter, and spills half the contents over the sheets and Sebastian’s hip. “Oh, fuck—sorry, sorry, hang on—”  
  
“Sorry,” Sebastian offers, valiantly trying not to laugh, though his lips’re twitching. “I expect I should be offering to clean up in place of you doing so…”  
  
“I told you we’re not traditional,” Chris says helplessly, looking around for the lid, “and I like taking care of you—”  
  
“Not because of that. Because I’m beginning to be afraid you’ll injure yourself on a bottle-cap. Here.” Sebastian holds out the lid; those eyes’re playful, but open and warm beneath. Unexpectedly beckoning tides.  
  
Chris breathes out, says, “I’m not the one who walks into doors,” and plucks it out of his hand. “Can you get dressed?”  
  
“Are there clothes?”  
  
“They should’ve…ah.” Both bags, his own and one he doesn’t recognize that must be Sebastian’s, are sitting discreetly in a corner, placidly awaiting notice. “You did bring clothes, right? Besides your suit. Not that I mind you in your suit. I like you in your suit.”  
  
“You like me _out_ of my suit, Chris.”  
  
“That too.” He brings Sebastian’s bag over, mostly because he doesn’t want his sub to have to get up yet. This is bordering on overprotective and he knows it, but Sebastian only gives him a half-amused, half-appreciative glance and starts pulling out black jeans. Chris sighs, and goes to unearth his own clothing. At least that’s uncomplicated.  
  
When he turns around, Sebastian’s fully dressed, if that’s the operative term. Chris literally feels his mouth fall open, not of his own volition.  
  
Sebastian blushes. “I got dressed in a hurry, yesterday…”  
  
“…and that’s a _bad_ thing?”  
  
Skinny jeans, clinging to infinite legs. White cotton t-shirt, loose and billowing, tucked in on one side in a thoughtlessly stylish way that Chris could never pull off in a million years. Simple and casual. Shouldn’t be that heartstoppingly flawless.  
  
But it is, Sebastian is, Sebastian’s perfect, dressed in black and white and bathed in afternoon-sunlight gold.  
  
Sebastian blushes more. “I may have forgotten underwear.”  
  
“Oh God,” Chris says.  
  
“Hardly. I’m not terribly comfortable.”  
  
“Oh…sorry…”  
  
“I didn’t say I minded. Are we ready? Do we need to do anything else?”  
  
“I don’t think—yes. Oh. Um. Yes.” One more thing. He can’t believe he’d almost forgotten, though in his defense the vision of Sebastian Stan in body-hugging jeans and minus underwear would divert bloodflow away from anyone’s brain.   
  
Sebastian Stan in body-hugging jeans, wearing a nearly transparent shirt, minus underwear, and carrying Chris’s handprints across his backside, hidden beneath concealing fabric. Chris’s cock announces its interest all over again.  
  
“One more thing—” Sebastian stops talking. Face colorless. Comprehension. “I _forgot_ —”  
  
Chris takes a deep breath. Without looking away from that shocked gaze, fumbles around in his bag until the box comes to hand. Holds it out. It’s not heavy.  
  
Sebastian takes it with one wavering hand. “You’ll have to open it. I can’t.”  
  
“You can,” Chris says.   
  
“I mean _I can’t_.” Sebastian looks at the box, then up at him. And Chris realizes abruptly that his submissive’s terrified. “I can’t—I know I have to, when we walk out of here I have to—but I don’t know how to do this, I can’t— _mi-e frică, vă rog sa nu-ni fac_ —”  
  
“English,” Chris pleads, heart shattering. “Please. You—you’ve never worn a collar for anyone, have you? Even in the clubs?”  
  
“Never.” Sebastian’s shaking. “I said—I don’t remember what I just said. I think I asked you not to make me…but you can’t, we can’t, I have to. Don’t I?”  
  
“I’m sorry.” It’s all he has. He’ll say it forever if that’ll help even an infinitesimal amount. “I’m so sorry. I know you never wanted this. You can take it off as soon as we’re home. It’s just in public…is that what it is? Being public?”  
  
“Partly.” Sebastian’s getting his voice under control. Like an instrument, Chris thinks. Like stumbling back to a dropped melody through sheer force of will. “I’ve spent thirty years not being public…I don’t know how to change that. Besides the obvious. Inside.”  
  
“I’m sorry,” Chris says again. “What can I do? D’you want me to pretend it’s broken or something, or, hell, actually break it, so you can’t wear it? I will.”  
  
“That won’t solve anything.” The lilt and sway of the music’s full of resignation. “We’ll only have to deal with it the next time we go out. And you can’t keep on making excuses. People will talk.”  
  
“I don’t care.” He does, it does matter, but not right now. Right now he doesn’t care one whit. “Can I touch you? Please?”  
  
Sebastian blinks. Surprise comes back into those eyes, which is better than dread. “I thought…yes, I said yes. Unless I say no. Yes.”  
  
“I thought I should ask.” He holds out a hand, not with any real hope. Sebastian looks at him, and then unexpectedly steps closer and buries his face in Chris’s chest, arms folding around his waist.  
  
Chris, heart overflowing with awe and love, holds him close. Kisses his hair, rubs his back, waits while ragged breaths even out. Thinks: this is perfect, even though it’s not, I could do this, I could do exactly this always.  
  
“I’m sorry,” Sebastian murmurs to his collarbone. “ _Îme pare rău_. I know it’s not your fault. It’s mine. It’s me.”  
  
“Maybe.” He rests his cheek in wistful dark hair, letting it tickle his mouth. “But if it’s you then it’s us. So we’ll figure it out together. You said partly, earlier.”  
  
He feels more than hears Sebastian take the breath. “I’m scared.”  
  
“About letting people see what you are?”  
  
“About…not knowing who I am.” Before Chris can begin to form words, Sebastian goes on. “If I put this on, once I put this on…I told you I’ve never felt like this with anyone else. I haven’t. I didn’t know I could. What else don’t I know? Who do I turn into, once I’m yours?”  
  
“Oh,” Chris says, because he doesn’t have any words, because you say _oh_ when your heart snaps in half.  
  
Sebastian swallows. Breathes for a pair of heartbeats, in and out, exhales like tiny cataclysms over Chris’s neck. And then shifts weight, takes a step back. Chris lets his arms loosen. Not holding on.  
  
Sebastian doesn’t step all the way back. Chris’s hands fall to his waist, and stay there.   
  
Sebastian looks at his face. And one side of that mouth lifts, wry and hopeless and hopeful. “You look the way I feel.”  
  
“I’m so fucking sorry.”  
  
“I’m…I don’t know.” The box is lurking on the bed. They both side-eye it. Sebastian shrugs with both eyebrows, and is smiling a bit more when Chris hesitantly catches his gaze. “I think I needed to say that. And now you know. I’m scared and I’ve told you and all I know now is that I don’t know how I’m going to feel. So we may as well.”  
  
“I could still pretend to break it…”  
  
“You could, but…I think I’d rather not.” Sebastian takes his hand. Studies Chris’s fingers, playing with them. Then lifts them to his lips. A kiss. Chris blinks back tears and wonder and love.  
  
“I still can’t,” Sebastian says, ever so slightly self-mocking, “so you’re going to have to open it, sir.”  
  
“Um. Okay.” He does. And the infinite universe gets quiet, holding its breath.  
  
It’s a very simple collar. Black. Basic. One O-ring at the front. He’d not been sure what Sebastian might like. But there is one addition, because he’d not been able to resist. The inside’s blue, butter-soft suede as close as he could get to the unmatchable shade of those wide eyes.  
  
He can’t hear whether Sebastian’s breathing, through the rush of blood in his own ears.  
  
Sebastian puts out a finger, tentatively. Touches black leather.   
  
The universe, sun and moon and all assorted galaxies, is running out of air.  
  
Sebastian looks up. “You picked this for me.”  
  
That voice is unreadable. Not emotionless. Chris just doesn’t have a clue which emotion. “Yes?”  
  
“So, then.” Sebastian looks back at the leather. “Yes.”  
  
“…yes?”  
  
“Yes. Before I change my mind.” But that’s conviction, stone under waves. Chris can hear it. “Go on.”  
  
There aren’t words, there aren’t any words, so he just picks the collar up. It slips around Sebastian’s throat like it knows it’s found a home.  
  
Sebastian closes his eyes as Chris steps behind him, tugs leather through the buckle, slips a finger underneath to check the fit. He doesn’t use the lock. Leaves it and the leash—he’d argued against that, but it’d been a set and the salesgirl had made some good points about public appearances and he’d given in—in the box without mentioning either.  
  
One of them has to talk, eventually. Sebastian isn’t. So Chris does. “Too tight?”  
  
“No,” Sebastian says without opening his eyes.  
  
“Are…you…okay?”  
  
“I don’t know. Ask me again.”  
  
“Um. Are you okay?”   
  
Sebastian opens both eyes. “Come here. Where I can see you.”  
  
Chris circles around to stand in front of him. His heart’s battering itself against his breastbone. He’s starting to be afraid he’s going to have an anxiety attack on the spot, and he can’t, he can’t, because Sebastian’s scared and has admitted to being scared and needs him to be strong…  
  
“Touch me,” Sebastian asks, voice finally showing cracks and splinters. “Please.”  
  
“Where…how should I…”  
  
Sebastian reaches out, picks up Chris’s right hand, and sets it at the side of his throat, low enough for most fingers to rest nervously over leather, high enough for his thumb to skim across Sebastian’s jaw.  
  
“I’m still scared,” Sebastian says, barefoot and dressed in black and white and Chris’s collar, “but I think I can do this.”  
  
So many words spring to his lips—I love you, you’re magnificent, I’m scared too but I think I won’t have the anxiety attack after all because you’re looking at me just like that and I can maybe remember how to breathe when you’re looking at me like that—that his tongue gets snarled up in all of them. What comes out is, “You can. You can do anything.”  
  
Sebastian laughs, more a taken-aback little huff of breath than anything else. “I don’t know about _anything_. I’m not very good on airplanes. But…thank you.”  
  
“Airplanes,” Chris says, keeping his hand in place, drinking in every word.  
  
“I take trains when I can. I am nervous about take-offs and landings, mostly. Not especially convenient when one has meetings in Hollywood on a regular basis.”  
  
“I can hold your hand. Next time. Every time. If you want.”  
  
“I might,” Sebastian says, lifting his hand, putting it back over Chris’s, “want that, Chris.”  
  
“I want that too,” Chris whispers, and they stand there looking at each other as the world gets back to rotating, as the galaxies spin, as the future unfolds.  
  
A knock interrupts the glass-blown fragility of the next inhale. Chris turns, and growls, “Yes?” at the traitorous door. Sebastian does that not-quite-smile expression again.  
  
“Er,” says a timid voice from the other side, “are you, er…finished? Only we need to…um…”  
  
Chris opens his mouth to yell at the boy. Sebastian, before he can, interjects, “Yes, James, come in.” Chris promptly closes his mouth, and wonders when the acolytes got names, and why Sebastian knows them.  
  
Come to think of it, he’s not surprised. They’re probably all in love with Sebastian too.  
  
He drops his hand from the collar as the door opens, but wraps it around the closest articulate Romanian wrist. His.  
  
Sebastian hides the smile in the corners of his mouth, but it’s present in his eyes. “Hi, James. Yes, we’re ready. Well. In fact I could use my boots. Which I see are over there. But otherwise yes. I take it you need us out of the room.”  
  
“We sort of need your sheets,” the shorter boy agrees, blushing. Chris isn’t sure why—surely they’ve seen the mornings-after innumerable times before, serving here—but then is illuminated when Sebastian adds, “And I promise I won’t forget about sending you the music, either. Shall I just direct it here, or do you have another address?”  
  
Chris leans in and whispers, “Music?”  
  
“He likes my soundtracks,” Sebastian stage-whispers back. “Even if he thinks _The Pact_ is a tolerable film. He should watch _Midnight Swan_.”  
  
“Hey,” the boy says. “I _did_. I know you were remixing Tchaikovsky, and it is every kind of unfair that you weren’t awards-eligible for that, and how’d you get the kind of electronica club sound out of a violin?”  
  
“Oh,” Sebastian says, looking delighted, “well, if you look at classical composers, Mozart especially, and some of the high notes, and then _don’t_ actually tune the—”  
  
The other boy, the taller one, clears his throat the second before Chris can. They both have the sense to look abashed.  
  
“Sorry,” James says to his fellow acolyte.  
  
“Sorry,” Sebastian says to Chris.  
  
“I’m learning new things about you all the time,” Chris notes, and threads their fingers together. “You’re good with kids.”  
  
Sebastian looks horrified. “I am _not_.”  
  
“I’m not a kid,” James protests. “Thirteen. Almost. Can I have your email?”  
  
“Oh, of course—oh, you do have a pen, thank you—”  
  
“You’re not even supposed to be talking to him,” complains the taller boy. “Don’t get attached.” And they proceed to collect stained linen without further comment—Chris, out of everyone, is the one who blushes—and whisk themselves out the door for, presumably, DNA verification of consummated marriage.  
  
“Well,” Chris says, holding Sebastian’s hand, holding his husband’s hand, “shall we go find your place?”  
  
“I—”  
  
The taller boy puts his head back around the corner. “Mr Evans?”  
  
“Hi,” Chris agrees, rather nonplussed.  
  
“We like him. Hurt him and we’ll kick your ass.” And the head vanishes.  
  
Chris turns to look at Sebastian, who apparently has been forced to sit down on the now-bare mattress, laughing too hard to stand.  
  
“Oh, sure,” Chris grumbles, heart completely light because Sebastian is laughing, “be _entertained_ that I’ve been threatened by a pair of adolescent boys, are they even allowed to do that, what did you do to them…”  
  
“I have no idea! I was only polite!” Sebastian lets Chris take both his hands. Lets Chris tug him to his feet, face to face, merriment filling up all the spaces. “I am quite confident you could take them if necessary, sir. Seventy-thirty odds, at least.”  
  
“ _Seventy?_ ”  
  
“Perhaps eighty? There are two of them. And even combined they are younger than you.”  
  
“Oh,” Chris says, and moves hands, curls them around both of Sebastian’s wrists, squeezes, “you are so getting spanked for that, sub.”  
  
“Very well,” Sebastian agrees demurely. “Ninety. I do enjoy your muscles.”  
  
“You do?” He squeezes harder. Feels the elegant bones of Sebastian’s wrists under his hands. Sebastian’s eyes shine in reply. Chris grins. “You do. Come on.”  
  
He leaves one hand around Sebastian’s right wrist. Picks up both bags with the other one. Muscles, indeed. He’s not surreptitiously flexing at all, either.  
  
Maybe a little. Sebastian’s watching.   
  
They go down the stairs—not back through the temple, but the other stairs, where their priest nods at them from his office. Chris isn’t entirely sure what that means, but he guesses that they’re good to go, and also that the man is well aware that Chris might be holding a permanent grudge about the aphrodisiacs. Which is exactly true. And deserved.  
  
Sebastian opens the side door. The world’s waiting beyond. Streetside bustle, taxicabs, New York skyscrapers and brick blocks and bewildered tourists and a cacophony of music and voices and car-horns. The scents of street food and construction and blue skies. Color in joyous punk riots and stately nineteenth-century splendor.  
  
And so many pairs of eyes. They’ll look at Sebastian and Chris, and they might see an Oscar-nominated musician and a beginning-to-be well-known artist, they might see a couple holding hands, but they’ll definitely see a collared submissive and his Dominant.  
  
Chris taps fingers over that wrist where it’s encircled in his grip, asking the question. Sebastian looks down the street, up at the sky, down at the grey flat sidewalk. Touches his collar with his free hand, a quick unthinking speaking gesture.  
  
“Sebastian,” Chris says, mostly just to say his name.  
  
“Chris.” Sebastian looks up. Smiles. It’s a private kind of smile, small and inward. But it gets brighter as their eyes meet. “Home?”  
  
“Yes,” Chris says, and thinks that of course he’s the one saying yes, even if Sebastian’s the one who’s vowed to be his, who’s his on paper and in the gaze of the world; Chris belongs to him, Chris’s heart belongs to him, and so that’s a yes, that’s a yes forever.  
  
He thinks about blueberries and chocolate and hand-feeding Sebastian in bed. He thinks about hearing Sebastian laugh every day. He thinks that maybe he can get Sebastian to fall in love with him, Chris Evans; and in that moment under the city sunshine with Sebastian’s smile lighting up the world, he thinks that might even be possible.   
  
He says, “You’re going to have to tell me where we’re going, because I did sort of look up your address when I wrote to you but I honestly can’t remember the street name, I’m sorry, do you want me to get us a cab?”  
  
And Sebastian tips his head against Chris’s shoulder, still smiling, and says, “I can tell you where we’re going, yes, please find us a cab.”

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [My love has concrete feet](https://archiveofourown.org/works/4240848) by [DancingInTheRain](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DancingInTheRain/pseuds/DancingInTheRain)




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